


Fortunate Son

by Ludovico_is_my_homeboy



Series: The Firestarter Series [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Billy Hargrove Being an Asshole, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Child Abuse, Codependency, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Escape, Everyone Gets A Hug, Experiment Billy Hargrove, Experiment Steve Harrington, Experiment!AU, F/M, Fluff, Good Parent Jim "Chief" Hopper, Healing, Homophobic Language, Hurt Steve Harrington, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Martin Brenner should not be around kids, Masturbation, Obsessive Behavior, Obsessive Billy Hargrove, Possessive Billy Hargrove, Protective Billy Hargrove, Protective Steve Harrington, Psychic Steve, Pyrokinetic Billy, References to Depression, Self-Esteem Issues, Smut, Solving self-esteem issues through retail therapy, Stalking, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:01:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 104,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludovico_is_my_homeboy/pseuds/Ludovico_is_my_homeboy
Summary: Experiment Seven escapes the Lab.Driven on by Brenner, an inter-dimensional gateway, and his own obsessive love, Experiment Six follows him.Experiment AU with psychic Steve and pyrokinetic Billy. Takes place after 'Firestarter' and 'Danger Illustrated'.





	1. It Ain't Me

Seven runs.

As he runs, he is reminded of a story he was told once a long time ago, back when he was much smaller than he is now.

Back when he was still a child in the Nursery... in the room with the rainbow on the door.

He thinks Papa told him this story. It is Papa’s voice he hears in his head as thoughts weave themselves together into a coherent narrative – short on details but perfectly clear and solid at its core.

It is the story about a forest, a place full of wolves waiting to gobble you up.

Eat you, eat you, tear you to shreds and swallow you down… and then you’re gone.

Gone. That’s what death is. Blood-red blood and then blackness.

Then nothing.

Of course, Brenner hadn’t used any such florid descriptions when telling this tale. Not his style.

After hearing the bare framework Seven had dreamed up the visuals later, all on his own. He’d never needed any help coming up with pictures in his head. It’s a blessing and a curse.

This particular story was about wolves and death and a naughty little boy who told lies.

Seven doesn’t tell lies.

He doesn’t tell lies… but he used to talk about the pictures in his head, and when that happened Brenner told him the story of the boy and the wolves.

Brenner always thought Seven told lies. Lies are stories that are wrong, that aren’t real, aren’t true. True is real. True is what you can prove, what can be seen by everyone, and Seven couldn’t prove that the pictures in his head were… well, anything really.

Brenner was always punishing him for telling others about the dreams, the things he saw, the things he knew were true even though he couldn’t prove they were to anyone who mattered.

They were lies, and they unsettled the other Numbers, and the Techs, too, sometimes...the men in suits and white coats who kept Seven and his fellow experiments in line.

Nobody cares about your dreams, Seven.

Brenner had gagged Seven for a while. For days. Seven remembers that.

He learned to keep quiet after that horrific punishment. He pushed his visions into the background of his waking thoughts and taught himself to separate the things he knew from the things people would accept. To be just sweet and pliant enough to be invisible.

And he rarely ever spoke to the tall men in suits who enjoyed punishing him for the slightest infraction, just because they could. Because they had all the power and he had none.

But he never… really, he never…

He never told lies.

Maybe it will be alright, he thinks. Brenner always thought he was a liar, but he isn’t, he knows this, they’re just pictures in his head, not lies. Maybe the wolves will stay away, then, even though he is in a forest and all alone.

Maybe the wolves only eat liars.

He runs.

It’s raining. It wasn’t raining the last time he made it out of the Lab, but it is now.

Seven knows, in an abstract sort of way, about rain, about what it is. He’s seen it in his dreams and learned about it when he was still in the Nursery.

It is still a shock to the system to feel the gentle violence of so many individual droplets of water striking him, soaking him. His thick brown hair flattens and clings to his pale, mole-dotted skin and he brushes it out of his face as he tries not to run into any low-hanging branches or slip in the mud beneath his feet. His stolen clothes are sodden and heavy against his shaking body.

He tilts his head back, and his mouth opens, and he gasps as he inhales water and air. In the rain he can taste the trees and the earth and the bittersweet resonance of living things.

He lets out a sound that is something between a laugh and a sob.

He’s had some challenging, frightening experiences with water recently… but this is different. Very different.

There is something cleansing about the rain. It heals as it hurts.

The pitter-pat of water against the green leaves of the trees around him seems to reverberate and echo until the forest around him pulses, a vibrating, sentient thing. He peers into the woods ahead, but the falling twilight obscures the details of his surroundings.

He runs.

It hurts.

He can’t move fast because of what he’s done to his foot, but he tries to push through the pain all the same and keep going, keep going.

His left ankle is in tatters, a mess of blood and flesh. If he looked down right now, he’d see gore and red and a bit of bone sticking out.

He’s not looking down right now, though.

He’s running.

Outrunning it.

He hurt himself, damaged himself… but he had to do it.

He _chose_ to do it.

He brought that heavy, jagged rock down hard on his ankle… on the thin metal band that encircled it. Its red indicator light blinked up at him like an evil eye. The rock slipped on impact and he screamed, shrieked in pain…but he didn’t let it slide fully out of his grasp. It was his only hope, this crude tool found in the dirt in the woods… he couldn’t let it go. He tightened his grip on the thick stone and brought it down again.

Again. Again. Until the band broke and the light stopped blinking and the tracker was disabled.

Yes, he chose to do it.

What a novelty… having choices.

It hurts. So much.

It hurts but he keeps going. He tears through the forest like there are monsters at his back, chasing him… and there are. He can’t see them, but he knows they’re there.

Monsters with mouths that open to reveal row after row of sharp teeth. They were in the dark place, and just on the other side of the wall, the gateway.

He saw them.

There are other monsters, too.

Men in suits carrying electric prods meant to cripple. Men carrying guns meant to kill.

Papa is behind him. Papa is coming.

Monsters, one and all.

And…

And also the only one he is really afraid of… the one who is _not_ a monster, not really. It would be easier if he was. Truth is, he’s the furthest thing from a monster you could be.

Seven’s other self.

But he’s not like Seven at all… not really. He’s powerful, so powerful. He is the only person who can really hurt Seven, and, worst of all, he is the only person Seven can really hurt back.

He loves Seven, wants him, needs him, is coming for him…

Is coming…

Seven runs.

He runs through the forest. It’s beautiful, so beautiful… he’s seen it before, in person and in his dreams, but it still takes his breath away to be there, to feel all the growing things so close and so green.

The Lab is sterile and cold and cut off from everything. It is death and stagnation and suffocation.

But the forest... the forest is alive.

It’s so alive and he can feel it. In his fingers, in his skin, in his mouth, in his pain, in his breath… he can feel it.

It’s beautiful and terrible.

He doesn’t hear shouts or movement or the sounds of his pursuers over the sound of the rain, but the relative quiet doesn’t soothe him. He can’t go much further like this on his own. He needs help, he needs to find people.

The right people… friends. He needs to find _friends_.

The faces of the children flash in his head – Dustin and Mike and Lucas and Will and Max. He met them before, on his last escape attempt. They fed him and gave him clothes and hid him in a warm, dusty basement.

They gave him his name, his secret name, his special name. He holds that name close inside of himself, keeps it safe. He is ready to use it when the time comes.

The knowledge that he can’t go back to his friends, to the children, to the ones he’d hoped would help him strikes him like a lightning bolt and nearly cuts him down at the knees. He realizes he was running to them this whole time… of course he was.

But he can’t go there. It’s the first place _they’d _look for him. The bad men.

His next thought it that it doesn’t matter.

He’s lost anyway.

Lost in the woods. Just like one of the stories they used to read in the Nursery. Just like one of Brenner’s ugly tales about the Outside. Just like in his strange dreams, the vivid ones that left him panting and scared when he woke again.

Lost. Alone and lost.

He stumbles. He can no longer tell if the wetness on his cheeks is from raindrops or tears.

Then, just like that, a light. Something bright in the falling darkness, something just up ahead, like someone flicked a switch the way they do in the cold darkness of the Lab in the mornings. Nothing, darkness, then just as suddenly you can see. The light waits, warm and welcoming.

Seven pants and stares. His brown eyes are wide and unblinking, wild with fear.

There is no shouting. The light doesn’t move. Not a flashlight.

Not _them_.

He runs towards it.

He sees a wooden structure materialize in the gray dusk. The windows are lit up with an electric glow. There is a single, worn-looking truck parked a little ways away.

He runs towards the shelter, towards the light.

He doesn’t see the wire stretched out between two trees, hovering a few inches off the ground.

Thin. Taut. Invisible. Inescapable.

It catches on his bad ankle.

He trips and falls and a deafening bang shatters the quiet of the night.

Brenner takes a moment to dab his handkerchief against his forehead and observe the little that remains of Central Laboratory One. The cloth comes away soiled by a thin streak of blood from a small cut on his forehead and slightly dampened by a layer of perspiration.

He figures that he is allowed this brief moment of almost-weakness, this passing acknowledgement of his fatigue. It has, after all, been a trying day, and many of his people are in much worse shape. His primary lab space is virtually demolished and one of his experiments has gone missing.

The sensory deprivation tank, formerly so tall and commanding, is in pieces over the whole of the laboratory floor. A half-inch of standing water covers the ground and is playing havoc with the loose electrical wires. Various technicians scuttle around, scraping up the wounded and trying to organize a clean-up.

When Seven experienced his unexpected episode in the tank, all while attempting to contact that tantalizing alternate dimension Brenner desperately craves access to, the resulting psychokinetic surge shattered the structure completely and brought down a significant portion of the machinery attached to it.

This fact is both intriguing and disappointing.

The tank was colloquially referred to as the Bathtub. Brenner doesn’t remember who came up with the name, which behavioral scientist or smart-mouthed guard thought it amusing. It hardly matters.

It’s a fanciful name for it, really, but Brenner has never been above appropriating fancy and fantasy to suit his own ends.

Creative metaphors are especially useful for interactions with Seven. Seven… his young dreamer, his imaginative child. Seven was always fascinated by stories when he was little, always in awe of the unseen world.

He always wanted to draw. He was always the most prone to nightmares.

Brenner has a talent for telling stories. You would never think that to look at him – solemn and fastidious, with a cold gaze that cuts right through most people yet reveals nothing of what he is actually thinking.

You wouldn’t think he’d have much of an imagination.

You’d be wrong, though.

Brenner is very good at shaping a narrative, at making the world appear to be whatever he wants it to be. He is very good at making a person think that they are small and weak, and that the world is an utterly terrifying place.

He is especially good at making himself seem like the only person in the room with any real power in his hands.

His taciturn nature only adds to his appeal as a storyteller. He never uses an ill-considered word. It lends weight to everything he says.

Seven, when he was small, would look up at Brenner with wide eyes and listen to everything he told him.

Brenner wondered idly when that changed, when he lost the boy’s innocent trust.

Maybe it happened when Seven’s powers failed to manifest. Repeatedly. He hadn’t been able to hide his disappointment in the child and hadn’t bothered to curb his displeasure… or the punishments that followed.

Maybe it was when Seven started looking at people and saying fanciful things about them that he had no possible way of knowing…

Maybe it was when Brenner decided to use Seven’s gentle heart against him.

Seven. His little dreamer. His painfully ordinary boy.

Or perhaps not as ordinary as he’d thought…

Martin Brenner is not a man who experiences regret the way most people do, so these musing don’t really go anywhere useful. They are promptly interrupted, in fact, by Agent Williams, looking uncharacteristically rumbled and agitated.

“Sir.”

Brenner nods.

“All Experiments accounted for and in lockdown except for Seven. We’ve activated his tracker but it’s offline.”

Interesting. Quite an accomplishment for Seven, a child who never displayed an aptitude for any of Brenner’s myriad lateral-thinking tests.

“He’s learned from last time,” he comments. Last time Seven made it all the way to the nearby town of Hawkins and Brenner had been forced to use a rather more creative extraction technique than usual.

“It shouldn’t matter,” Williams’ brow furrows. “Those things are designed to withstand significant damage.”

“We may have underestimated the lengths he’ll go to in order to escape. If he’s managed to remove the ankle band, he himself might also be damaged. Make a note of it. I doubt he’d go to a hospital on his own, but someone might find him and seek medical treatment for him.”

“Yes, sir. We figure he must have escaped through one of the central air ducts… the east duct is the most likely bet… and is currently in or cutting through Hawkins Woods.”

Brenner nods. “Very well. I have a plan for recovering Seven. With this new, as yet unquantified manifestation of power, I want something more advanced than the standard extraction team. What about the other situation?”

Williams hesitates. It is perfectly understandable, and Brenner allows it for brief moment before his eyes narrow and chin tilts dangerously.

“The…” Williams swallows. “The gateway is stable. Nothing is coming through. The technicians are monitoring the issue and collating the data from the surge. They… um, wanted you to know that they can’t guarantee that the incident didn’t cause more… disruptions. Elsewhere. In the woods, maybe… or in town.”

Brenner absorbs this information silently.

“Sir?”

After a long moment, Brenner gives Williams another slight nod.

“Monitor the situation. There might be some collateral damage because of this. We’ll need to contain it until the situation can be remedied.”

“How will we remedy it, Sir?”

Brenner gives the underling a look that is almost indulgent.

“We retrieve the one who caused it, Williams. And if his tracker is disabled, there is really only one way to do that.”

Seven is gone.

Six knows this for several reasons.

The first reason is that the Lab is on lockdown and no one has come yet to return Seven to their shared room. That is standard procedure for lockdowns. Numbers are returned to their sleeping quarters when a lockdown occurs.

For safety.

Safety.

The word rolls over in Six’s head, twists and morphs into a hollow thing devoid of meaning. He sits on the bed in that small, poorly lit living space in silent stillness, but inside he is a roiling whirlpool of emotions.

Seven is safe when he is in this room with Six – then and only then. Six knows Seven is safe when he is here, when Six can wrap his fingers around thick locks of hair and stroke pale skin and press his mouth against that lean, pliant body.

That’s when Seven is safe. He’s safe in Six’s arms.

When he’s not here, when they’re not together, uncertainty abounds. If Seven’s not here, he’s out there in the Lab… in glass rooms and testing rooms and in the big room with the Bathtub.

Seven has learned to fear the Bathtub over these last few days, and so, in turn, has Six.

At first, Six had been pleased that Seven finally started manifesting abilities after years of nothing. The fact that a highly troubling (terrible, traumatic) incident had triggered them was something that Six ignored, just as he determinedly chose to ignore every other memory of that horrible day roughly two weeks ago.

Focus only on the useful, on the good. If Seven had some special skill that Papa could exploit beyond his primary role as a toy to keep Six calm, then his position within the Lab would be more secure. 

After all, what use is a useless Experiment?

(What happens to the ones who disappear?)

Six could keep Seven with him (safe) if Seven was useful. More useful, that is. This was supposed to be a good thing.

Six’s satisfaction hadn’t lasted long.

Seven told Six about the Bathtub and the water and how he feared dying in that small, dark tube, cut off from everything, panic hampering his ability to breathe freely.

He’d told Six about the strange place he’d visited while deprived of his ability to see and hear, the place where pictures of other times and other people flashed across his blinded eyes.

He said he’d seen a crack in the world. A crack where monsters could get through.

Six had told him to hush, that there wasn’t any such thing. Brenner would be cross if he heard Seven crying and carrying on. The punishment for telling lies is solitary confinement and maybe the gag again if Seven kept insisting.

Six can’t protect Seven if Seven is in solitary confinement. He can’t cage him in his arms and feed him and make him sleep. He can’t monitor the emotions flickering across his lover’s face and respond accordingly – kiss, smile, frown, lick, speak, grip, nudge.

He can’t act or react, can’t control anything if Seven isn’t _with him_.

He can’t touch and be touched by him. He can’t hold on to Seven if Seven isn’t here.

Seven had replied that Brenner knew about the monsters and sent him into the Bathtub anyway. He’d said that Brenner hadn’t seemed to think Seven’s stories were lies anymore.

The alarms wail on and on and still Seven does not return.

The second reason why Six knows that Seven is gone is that when someone does appear, sliding open the room’s door and standing there in the entrance, it is not Seven. It is Brenner, Papa… and he is flanked by two Techs wearing suits and holding weapons.

Brenner’s lips are a tight, thin line and there is something unmistakably disturbed in his face. It is not his most common look, but it is familiar enough all the same. It is a look that means that something has gone wrong.

Even Six, who is no secret mind-reader like Seven, can see this.

“Where is he?” Six growls.

The words come out harsh, over-loud, from some place deep down inside Six. They almost sound like they are coming from someone else.

Brenner’s mouth curls down and his lips go even thinner than before. One of the Techs steps forward and Six can see the long, thin rod of metal in his hand, the end crackling with electricity.

Six is up and off his small bed and in a heartbeat the Tech’s sleeve is on fire. The Tech shrieks, flailing and falling backwards, frantically trying to put out the flames scorching his arm.

Six’s fury and panic is wild, uncontrollable. He isn’t thinking… if he was thinking, he’d never turn towards Papa with the intention of setting the older man alight with his horrible powers…

Brenner's hand moves, then, and Six feels the familiar crippling sensation… starting on his ankle before engulfing him completely. Just like that, the fire he can call to his fingertips and send wherever he wishes is gone, dampened by the inescapable metal band on his leg and the currents it sends through Six’s body.

Six is still physically big, though, and still enraged. He throws himself forward out of sheer desperation.

The other Tech moves in front of Brenner and Six is zapped with the electric prod. Between the two sources of agony he can’t help it… he falls to the ground with a furious scream. Every muscle in his body goes horribly rigid and he feels the paralysis take over. The Tech with the prod relents after a moment but Brenner and the ankle band do not.

It’s too much to struggle against, and the inner horror Six feels at the knowledge that Seven is gone is numbed, reshaped into something else.

Six goes as pliant as he can under the earth-shattering power of the electricity, the loss of his abilities and the punishing pain that Papa bestows on him.

He stretches out on the ground, panting and submissive. A weak, strained whimper escapes him.

The crushing weight of helplessness sinks in, worse than any other agony.

And there is only one person who can make the pain stop.

After a moment that feels like an eternity, Six sees Papa’s polished shoes step forward into his line of sight and come to a stop directly in front of his face. His slate-blue eyes blur with unshed tears as Brenner kneels next to him and idly brushes a golden curl off Six’s face.

Six looks up at Papa and struggles to keep the desperate hatred out of his eyes.

“Are you finished?” Brenner asks, voice mild.

Six can’t really say anything. He can’t force words out when his body is a rigid tableau of suffering. He can only blink up at Brenner and hope that his willingness to comply translates somehow.

Because he is willing to comply… he is willing to do many things, almost anything if it makes the pain stop. He’ll do anything if he gets what he wants. What he needs.

Brenner must read this capitulation in his eyes because he nods and uses the small remote in his hand to switch off the rippling pulse of agony triggered by the ankle band. Six slumps against the unforgiving solidity of the floor and tries to collect his scattered self again.

“There has been an incident,” Brenner says after a long beat. “Part of the Lab has been damaged and Seven has escaped.”

Six wants to ask what kind of incident could have caused this.

Six wants to ask if Seven was damaged during the incident or in the process of escaping.

Those questions will get him nowhere, though… not with Brenner. He is Brenner’s special project, a favorite child, but even that will not help him in this instance.

Such information can only be characterized as secondary. Irrelevant.

His suspicion is confirmed when Brenner continues talking. He gives Six his assignment. His orders. His task to complete.

Six stays submissive and complaint and listens. He sees the rules of the game, the parameters and goals.

He sees how doing what Brenner says will get him what he wants.

He has always been good at understanding these things.

The rest of it doesn’t mean anything… the pain and humiliation are mere details.

The mission is what matters.

Getting Seven back is what matters.

Seven stays on the ground. He feels the agonizing pain in his leg. He smells wet earth and verdant plant life. He tries not to move.

He knows what that 'bang' sound means. He may not know everything – or anything – but he knows what that means. He’s heard it before.

A gun, a gun.

Pain and death.

He doesn’t think he’s been hit, but he stays on the ground anyway. When you hear gun shots, you stay on the ground until they come and take you away.

_Lewis, the nice man in the big truck... all was well, Seven ran, he got away, Lewis helped him, it was warm in the truck... and then all of a sudden Lewis's head was a mass of broken bone and brains and flesh and a thousand shades of red all over the window and the wheel and Seven and then they came and took Seven back and they left Lewis behind, dead, he was dead, it was Seven's fault and he was..._

If you stand up, you get mowed down by their bullets and their hate.

Better to stay on the ground.

The rain continues to fall.

Seven shivers violently, freezing and frightened.

The door to the building opens. Seven stays down, only allows himself a brief glance up. The lights are off inside but he can still see the silhouette of a figure standing in the doorway. Even from here Seven can see that it is a man, big and tall and wide.

He probably has the gun.

He probably has all sorts of things that hurt.

Seven has made a horrible mistake.

He can’t help it. A low whimper escapes him, a miserable sound that rounds itself out into a weak cry of terror. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, tries to take in a calming breath.

When he opens his eyes again the big man has moved forward, and something smaller, quicker, is trying to dart around him towards Seven. There is a discussion happening on the front porch, harsh whispers that Seven can’t quite make out.

The two figures fall silent, and then both of them step off the porch, walk down the worn, warped front step, and make their way towards Seven.

Seven pants and stays down. He shuts his eyes, afraid, and then opens them again.

The man and the child – a girl with wavy brown hair – stand in the rain and look down at him.

He doesn’t know them, but he recognizes them from his dreams. He’s seen their faces in the visions that are lies but also the truth… and he knows the man and child are important, but he doesn’t know if they will hurt him now.

There is a gun, but it's in a holster on the man’s belt. The man is even more intimidating up close.

The girl is unarmed, but the sight of her sends a vibrant electric feeling down Seven’s spine and he knows… he knows she’s the dangerous one. Something about her is different…familiar-strange. Seven struggles to place her.

“Who are you?” the big man asks.

Who are you? Isn’t that the one question Seven doesn’t know the answer to?

The secret in his chest burns and, stumbling, comes out.

The secret name.

“Se… Steven. Seven. Steven. Se…” Seven chokes on the words.

He doesn’t know the answer.

Is he the number Brenner assigned him or is he the name the children gave him? Is he Brenner’s project, the sum total of his special gifts? Or is he the boy that Dustin, the curly-haired child who found him shivering and alone in the woods, grinned up at as he came up with a secret identity for him?

What is he? And which him is the right one?

“Please,” he murmurs, and the word comes out as a wet, miserable sigh. He tugs at his wounded leg, still tangled in the wire, and a wave of pain washes over him. His arm jerks out, an unbidden muscle spasm, and the little girl’s eyes latch onto it.

Something in that gaze lights up in the falling darkness and the girl is kneeling down beside him in an instant. The older man lets out a huff, but she ignores him and tugs at Seven’s hand until his arm is outstretched, uncovered and free of the now-shredded shirt he’d hastily pulled on after crawling out of the wreckage of the Bathtub. The dim light from the cabin illuminates what she is looking at.

Seven can see it now…the thing that fascinates the little girl.

The mark. His mark.

007 in black lettering on his forearm.

Something about those numbers now feels like a particular insult, a cruel attack that hits him right in his chest.

He fled the Lab and smashed his ankle and tried to run… but he’ll never get away. The mark remains.

He’s trapped and he can’t see a way out. All his dreams and insights and plans and there is still no way out.

He lets out another weak, keening moan and tries to pull his arm away, tries to tuck it against his chest, tries to hide. The child releases him and Seven thinks that’s the end of it, but she only lets him go because she needs both hands for what she does next.

The little girl pulls her own sleeve up.

Finally, Seven sees.


	2. I got a name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Brief depictions of domestic abuse

** Then **

_Why ‘Billy’, then? If it’s William on the license?”_

_“It’s a nickname.”_

_“Nickname?”_

_Six hums, threads the fingers of one hand through Seven’s lovely hair as Seven curls around him. Six's hooded eyes are gazing up at the ceiling of their shared room, but he can still picture the look of interest dancing across the other boy's face. _

_“It means it’s a shorter version of the real name,” Six says. _

_Seven considers this. He idly strokes Six’s chest, running his hand over smooth flesh, down dips and dimples, over curves. Skin to skin. _

_They are in their narrow bed, naked and wrapped up at the waist in a thin blanket. It’s night and the only light in the room comes from the small, glowing bar above the door… that light never goes off, not even at night. It casts a pale glow over the room and makes both boys look pale, almost blue-green. It reminds Seven of some of his stranger dreams._

_Seven rests his head against Six’s chest and rises and falls in time with his lover’s steady breathing. Their arms are wrapped around each other. Seven feels boneless, breathless, and is being soothed in his post-coital state by the reassuring solidity of his lover’s body. _

_Soothed physically, that is. Mentally, he’s doing handstands trying to wrap his head around the concept of nicknames, specifically as they relate to Six’s newly obtained fake driver’s license, given to him by Papa for use on his missions._

_Clothes, shoes, a wallet with ten dollars and a driver’s license in it. A passport Outside… away from the Lab, with its blank walls and its fluorescent lights and its chilliness and its tortures. That’s what Six got from Brenner, to be used when he is out in the world serving Brenner’s insatiable will._

_Six tells Seven all about it, and Seven sees, just under the surface, the darker implications of these gifts. _

_Brenner likes to collect things. Six is both a prized possession and, now, one of his best collectors._

_Seven can read that clearly in Brenner’s mind, can follow the twisted, gnarled thread of the older man's thoughts all the way to the dark, yawning pit of his ambition. _

_If Seven had those things, clothes and shoes and money and a license, he wouldn’t use them to please Brenner. He’d use them for himself… there’s no telling how far away he could go with tools like those at his disposal. _

_Which is, of course, exactly why he is not allowed to have such things._

_“There is no Billy in William, though,” Seven says after a moment. “Wouldn’t it be… Wi…Will… Willie?”_

_“Don’t know. Brenner says…”_

_“Brenner says,” Seven parrots sarcastically under his breath, irritated as he always is by Papa’s name and the deferential way Six says it._

_“…Says it’s a version of William,” Six finishes, tugging the other boy's hair gently, chiding him for the interruption. _

_Unfortunately, Seven doesn’t know enough about names and the world outside to argue that point effectively. He satisfies himself by swiping a thumb over Six’s right nipple and relishing the soft grunt the other boy makes. _

_He is very fond of these moments, of these touches that do not necessarily go anywhere. They both like them, both him and Six, but Seven in particular values gestures that aren’t utilitarian in the slightest. _

_He values them like he values hummed snatches of songs, and colorful patterns on neckties, and the rare moments when he is given materials to draw with… all those small things that are frequently denied to him. Those things that men like Papa consider useless._

_It feels like a small kind of rebellion in this place to do anything just for the sheer pleasure of doing it._

_“Nickname,” he murmurs, rolling the word over again in his mouth. “Nick – name.”_

_“He said it’s for your family and friends to use,” Six continues. “If you want to be affectionate. Nobody just uses one name, usually. Especially if it’s long. Sounds more normal this way. I’m Billy in person and William on the license.”_

_“Seems greedy to have two names.” Seven doesn’t even consider himself as having a real name at all. “I can’t shorten Six into anything.”_

_“I could call you ‘Sev’.”_

_Seven snorts, but does consider the option for a moment. _

_"Doesn’t sound right," he decides. "Something is missing.”_

_Six hums again and pulls Seven closer to him. Six realizes his mistake too late - Seven shifts and Six can see, suddenly, the dark cloud descending on the brunette. Six can see it happen, can see the shadows falling across his lover’s face, and he feels his heart drop to his stomach, heavy with dread._

_“None of it sounds right,” Seven murmurs, chest starting to heave as he works himself up to a tantrum. Six knows immediately that they are not talking about names any longer._

_"It is right," Six replies. "It's the way it is. It's how it works. Brenner said..."_

_“**He** isn’t right," Seven continues, growling, insistent in the face of Six's tacit denial. He almost unconsciously balls his hands into fists and pushes them down against his lover, a childish form of useless physical resistance to a larger existential threat. _

_If he thinks he can move Six, he's very much mistaken._

_“No,” Six answers, his voice suddenly sharp and hard. “No, Seven.” _

_Six knows where this is going. Seven will start talking about Brenner now, about how he hurts and humiliates them, about how his rules don’t make sense and how his ideologies are hollow and cruel. _

_Seven has a sense of truth completely at odds with the pure facts of their reality, and the disparity between what Seven insists is ‘right’ and what they do and must live with is irreconcilable. _

_They’re not talking about this now. Six wouldn’t have mentioned the new name and the driver’s license he’d been given at all if he’d thought it would end in this old, familiar fight. _

_Except, that’s not entirely true… he’s always had trouble keeping secrets from Seven. Seven has a way of prying them out, of sensing when Six is hiding things from him. He can read Six as clearly and quickly as Six can read numbers on a clock and tell the time._

_And also… things don’t feel real or right for Six until he shares them with Seven. _

_Seven is the only thing he has that is completely his. He is the most precious, perfect part of his life. His friend, his lover… his husband, insofar as he understands the word. Seven knows Six inside and out._

_Six doesn’t hide things from him. He can’t hide things from him._

_That doesn’t mean he wants to have this argument again._

_The yawning chasm of Seven’s discontent opens up beneath them._

_It is up to Six to see that it doesn't swallow them both whole._

_“It’s not right…” Steve mutters again, more insistent, twisting against Six slightly, pulling away. _

_He’s gearing up for a fight…_

_But before Seven can get any traction Six pushes the brunette off his chest and onto his back, hovering over him and caging him with his arms. _

_He can do this because he is stronger than Seven physically, because Brenner has encouraged Six to develop athletically. He hasn’t bothered to do the same with Seven. _

_The disparity makes it very easy for Six to hold Seven down._

_He drops his head down and latches onto the vulnerable juncture at the other boy’s throat and shoulder with his teeth. He bites down hard. _

_Seven groans and Six sucks fiercely at the skin, determined to make a bruise there. The sensation slips over the razor’s edge into true pain and Seven cries out weakly, unhappy._

_Six can’t bring himself to regret it or stop. If it makes Seven be quiet and if it leaves a brutal purple mark on Seven’s throat, a display of Six’s power and ownership, then he refuses to regret it. _

_He isn’t Brenner. He doesn’t have the kind of power Brenner has. He’s not God._

_He can still punish, however._

_He punishes Seven. _

_He does not want to argue about their place here, about the possibility of escaping it. _

_Seven knows this. He knows this and he brings it up anyway. He’s bad, he deserves to be punished. _

_He needs to be taught. _

_Six bites and sucks and then moves a scant half-inch over and attacks Seven’s pale skin again. His teeth are sharp, and his mouth is cruel and unforgiving. _

_He’ll leave a collar of purple around Seven’s neckline, will press against it with his fingers and worry it with his teeth for days until the bruises heal. _

_He doesn’t care if it hurts or humiliates Seven, if he is sore afterwards, if the workers in the Lab see it and laugh at him._

_Everyone, all the Techs will see the bruises and know that Six did that to Seven. _

_And, most important of all, Seven will know. _

_Seven will know that Six doesn’t want to talk about these bad things…about things like wrongness and unfairness and disobedience and escape. _

_These ideas always unsettle Seven horribly, and when Seven is unsettled he does unpredictable things like talk back and act out and try to run away. He goes silent and sad or bitterly angry, he doesn't eat or sleep, he makes stupid mistakes and it always ends in Seven being punished and taken away from Six. _

_Six always suffers when Seven gets ideas. _

_They are bad ideas. They disrupt routine and order. They go against Brenner, against Papa. These ideas trouble Six deeply and make his head and his chest hurt whenever Seven brings them up. _

_He doesn’t want to talk about things he can’t change. He just wants to exercise his limited power over those things he can control. _

_Things like Seven._

_Seven will learn how to behave. Seven will learn to obey the one he belongs to. _

_One way or another Seven needs to learn. _

_For his own good, he needs to learn._

_Seven whines and twists his hips around under Six, tears leaking from his eyes and his member hardening against his will as it brushes up against Six’s naked thigh. _

_“Nooo…” he groans, breath hitching sharply. “Stop! Hurts… hurts... don’t… Six, please…!”_

_His hands scrabble for purchase against Six’s solid body, but Six captures them easily and pushes them down on the bed._

_He mentally urges Seven not to fight him._

_If Seven submits to this Six will consider soothing him afterwards, pleasuring him. He’ll plant soft kisses, almost grotesque in their gentleness, against Seven’s wounded throat, and he will reach down with his hand and stroke the boy’s half-hard cock until he comes. He may even hold him afterwards as he cries._

_But you only get rewards when you are good._

** Now **

Agent Williams oversees the initial surveillance efforts, the first forays into finding the runaway Seven.

He is dimly aware that, elsewhere in the Lab, others are cleaning up the damage, are corralling the remaining Experiments and preparing them for transportation, are building a containment structure around the new crack in reality that Seven had accidentally created in a broken concrete wall.

They scurry around like so many rats, here and there... the pieces of a puzzle that is constantly unmaking and remaking itself.

Shimmering, pulsing, glowing, the crack in the wall offers myriad possibilities. It is a tantalizing glimpse into a world that terrified Seven so badly that he broke all known laws of the physical universe, destroyed an entire lab, and fled into the night rather than face it again.

Accommodating the fantastic – in this case, a gateway to another dimension – is a surprisingly easy thing to do when you get right down to it. In this case a lack of imagination, an trait required in government officials, is an unexpected asset.

This lack of imagination prevents any unnecessary fears of the unknown from rearing their ugly heads. 

Williams is very aware of this lack, this absence in himself. He is also sensitive to the fact that those skills he does possess must now be applied to finding the cause of it all, Experiment Seven, who has transformed from useless lab rat to weaponized power source to wanted fugitive in the space of only a few hours.

The existential whys and wherefores are immaterial when you are an agent like Williams.

Williams is aware of these other things happening, the clean-up and containment, but they are not his primary focus. His focus is on Seven and, tangentially, Six. He has always been responsible for the Experiments – the Numbers, as they are known colloquially (and everyone else, all the scientists, agents, and staff are all Techs... and it is Numbers versus Techs, always... the special little freaks versus everyone else) – and it seems only fitting that they should be his central priority now, when everything else seems to be going to shit.

Agent Johnson - young and skinny and perfectly competent in an uninspiring sort of way - sits at a workstation next to Williams and reads the files aloud, recites the information Williams already knows by heart.

“'Experiment Six. Age seventeen. Obtained independently with permission of parents. Ability… pyrokinesis, including the ability to produce fire organically and direct it physically, altering its momentum and intensity. Can produce fire in areas beyond of his line of vision within a limited range but demonstrates significantly more control and accuracy at close quarters. Other powers include heightened physical strength, accelerated healing.'”

“Abilities, Johnson,” Williams corrects. “Not ‘powers’. This isn’t a comic book, and these things aren’t superheroes.”

John coughs nervously and continues reading. “'Prone to violent outbursts and berserker rage. Triggers for outbursts vary and are often unknown. Specialized socialization recommended as a behavioral modifier.'”

“You know what that means, Johnson? ‘Specialized socialization’?” Williams asks.

Johnson shakes his head.

“It means if he doesn’t get his teddy bear to cuddle with at night, the little firebug goes crazy.” Williams taps the second folder on the edge of Johnson’s desk. “This is the teddy bear.”

Johnson obligingly picks up the folder and reads.

“'Experiment Seven. Age seventeen. Obtained via Project MKUltra. Abilities…'” Johnson pauses. “'Accelerated healing.' Is that it?”

“It’s out of date,” Williams feels a rush of weariness. “It’s been twelve days since the first incident; someone should have updated it.”

Johnson waits, eyes darting between the thin file and his fellow agent.

“Telekinesis,” Williams says after a beat. “Very erratic telekinesis that manifests as an uncontrollable burst of force when Seven is in a state of heightened stress. Enough to destroy heavy equipment and throw grown men through the air.”

“Like today.”

“Yes.” Like today and like the day almost two weeks ago when it happened the first time.

The day everything changed.

Heightened stress. Sheer terror, actually. Williams knows this all too well, but he still repeats Brenner’s phrase.

_Stress._

“And… telepathy?” Johnson ventures. “That’s why Brenner wanted him in the Bathtub?”

“Seven’s telepathic abilities were in the process of being tested when today’s incident occurred. We still don’t know their full extent, but there was some evidence that he could read people's thoughts and that in the right circumstances he could communicate with the parallel universe currently trying to bust through that wall back there. And there was also the suggestion that he might have… precognition.”

Johnson blinks.

“He has these dreams, but they’re inconsistent and…" Williams huffs irritably. "Nobody thought… after repeated punishments he stopped telling other people about them, and about potential instances of telepathy. He learned early on to hide this, apparently. It was an oversight... a severe one. But he had other uses, so…”

Williams leaves off his explanation with a shrug.

“Behavioral modification,” Johnson obligingly fills in the blanks. “A teddy bear for Six.”

“Yes.”

So those are the pieces of the game. This game, this mission, this quest. And Seven and Six are at the center of everything.

The preliminaries of the search are simple and completed quickly. They establish that Experiment Seven escaped Hawkins Lab by climbing through the east ventilation shaft and emerging from a waste tunnel that opens outside of the perimeter fence.

Once out, Seven immediately disabled the tracker on his ankle using a nearby stone. A moment of improvisation, and extreme desperation.

Suggestive, according to Brenner.

The stone, still covered with traces of blood, and parts of the tracker are recovered by Team One and returned promptly to the base. Attempts to trace Seven through the woods using conventional tracking methods are severely hampered by a delay in the initial pursuit caused by the chaos occurring at the Lab and by rain washing away physical evidence. The team is quickly recalled, and return empty-handed.

Williams makes a note that Seven is wounded and that his escape options are limited if he is proceeding on foot. However, he has managed to hitch rides before, so Williams also sets up a perimeter check on nearby roads and highways.

He prepares to deploy the primary surveillance team to monitor the town of Hawkins, with a specialist extraction team in reserve.

These tactics are all straightforward enough. They are things any agent would do. But still, even with the sheer scope of such an undertaking, Williams is aware that this is just one part of a multi-pronged attack.

If this was surgery, this casting of the wide, comprehensive net with which to catch Seven would be the equivalent of taking a bone saw the patient’s chest.

Williams’ eyes flick over to a monitor screen showing him the interior of a room where the scalpel, delicate and precise, is being prepared.

Six’s face is a blank mask from what Williams can see on the screen. He makes few unnecessary movements and minimal eye-contact as he strips out of his scrubs and dresses himself in his civilian disguise under the sharp gazes of Brenner and two guards.

Brenner is talking non-stop throughout. Williams can see his mouth moving, and though he cannot hear the words through the monitor he is sure they are clear and explicit orders.

Six keeps his eyes fixed on the far wall, on nothing, yet there is no doubt that he is absorbing everything being said. Williams can read the micro-expressions on the little firebug’s face. He watches as Six ties his shoes and puts a wallet with some petty cash and a fake driver's license in the pocket of his jeans.

“We’re sending an erratic sociopath with the ability to create and direct huge fireballs out to find and collect his sex toy, a boy whose powers are, as of this moment, unquantifiable and uncontrolled,” Williams says to Johnson.

And yet, this strategy will likely be the most fruitful.

Six has an obsessive interest in competing his mission, and his abilities will sufficiently contain Seven, who, while powerful, lacks Six’s brute strength and willingness to use it.

Williams has only seen Seven’s powers manifest in a physically harmful way twice, and both instances were noteworthy for their brevity and for Seven’s apparent inability to control his powers in a focused way.

Six, on the other hand, has perfect control.

Six will go after those who shelter Seven, who consider themselves his friends, who might even believe they care about him.

Six will find them, and when he finds them, he will find Seven.

He will find Seven and bring him home.

And then, thinks Williams, we will all carry on with our wretched, tortured little lives.

In another room, in the part of the Lab that Williams can’t see, the gateway between worlds pulses and glows.

“So,” says Hopper, folding his arms over his thick chest and plastering his best glare on his face. “You’re double-O Seven. Like James Bond.”

The boy blinks up owlishly at him. They've moved this conversation - and Hopper has no doubt that it's going to be a long and complicated one - into the cabin and out of the rain, but the kid hardly looks less pathetic now than when he was lying prone in the mud outside. He’s sitting on Hopper’s overstuffed couch, swimming one of Hopper’s old sweaters and an over-sized pair of sweatpants, wrapped in a blanket and shivering.

His ankle is a mashed-up mess of blood and bone, but miraculously it doesn’t look like anything is broken.

A bright yellow towel is wrapped around the wound for now in an attempt to stem the bleeding. Hopper will consider applying more advanced medical care once he’s figured out who the boy is and determined that he’s not a threat.

And, also, once the boy is willing to let Hopper get closer. When the cop approached him earlier with the towel, the brunette had thrown out his arms and flinched back violently.

The look of fear on the kid’s face is not one Hopper particularly wants to see again.

The rain pounds on the thin roof as night falls outside.

“I’m Steven,” Seven says after a beat, quietly correcting Hopper.

Seven’s ankle hurts quite badly, and the pain and exhaustion are loosening his tongue in a way that is decidedly dangerous. He sucks in a small breath and his gaze drops, darting furtively, fearfully over to where Eleven is perched in the coffee table a few feet away.

Danger.

_Behave. You need to learn to behave, Seven. _

_You **need** to **learn**._

“I mean…” he stutters out, trying to get a grip on his situation. “I… I met some… some people. They gave me that name. I guess I can be… Bond? James Bond? If you want… I can. I can. If you want.”

Hopper lets out a rush of air that is half-sigh, half-groan, and runs his hand through his thinning hair. Several years as surrogate father to Eleven had taught the older man a few things. However, dealing with kids is still tremendously difficult and confusing work and dealing with child science experiments is even worse.

He realizes, belatedly, that he is looming over the doe-eyed, still-damp boy.

Eleven was just talking to him about this. Looming. He ‘looms’, apparently. It’s ‘intimidating’… apparently. Eleven had thrown out a choice word or two on the subject.

He has no desire to further frighten the boy, who seems not just harmless but downright bedraggled, so he huffs and plops down backwards into his recliner, the tell-tale hints of a headache creeping on the edges of his brain. 

“Whatever you want, kid,” Hopper sighs. “You want to be Steven, that’s fine.”

Seven or Steven is startled by this declaration for some reason, like he expected Hopper to object and assign him a completely arbitrary name just for the hell of it. The police chief decides to ignore this for the moment and plow on.

“The point is, you’ve got the same kind of number tattooed on your arm as this one here,” he nods to Eleven.

“Eleven,” says Eleven, by way of an unnecessary introduction.

She smiles at him and reaches a small hand out, which the boy touches with just the tips of his fingers as if he is afraid too much aggression might cause her to crumble away.

In the soft light of the cabin, the air grows still.

Seven looks at the little girl and feels something warm and fragile fluttering in his chest.

“Like me?” he asks, quietly.

Eleven nods and her gaze flicks over to a half-empty coffee mug sitting next to her. Seven can feel a tug, a pull in his chest, something he’s only ever felt in the quiet of his own imaginings.

Without moving physically, without lifting a finger, the girl raises the mug into the air. It floats up to just about eye level and then twirls and dances without her touching it, sloshing the liquid within. The tug in Seven’s chest morphs into something like recognition but deeper.

Like a feeling of kinship, maybe.

A small dribble of red bubbles out of Eleven’s left nostril.

Seven watches. He only realizes that he’s grinning widely, almost giddy with happiness, when the cup gently lands on the table again and the girl looks back at him.

Under her scrutiny, the smile fades and his gaze drops.

“I can’t do that,” he says. He feels that old, familiar sense of inadequacy creeping up inside. “I can’t do much, but…”

He glances over at Hopper, who is watching this interaction with an unreadable expression. He meets the older man's gaze and, taking a deep, steadying breath, tips over the edge, out of the physical space he occupies in the outside world and into murky depths of the cop's expansive, multi-colored soul.

He focuses and, as always happens when he is free from the oppressive power of the ankle band and the harsh judgment of Brenner and his own crippling fears, the knowledge comes to him.

It looks, in his mind’s eye, like a kind of thread, a glowing lifeline clearly visible within the tangled, pulsing web that represents everyone in the world, all their private lives, all their choices, all connected together in ways both visible and invisible. 

“You’re wondering where that box with your old pants is, and if they’ll fit me,” he tells Hopper, the thread he sees going purple and then red and then blue as he follows it. “You think maybe you can talk… Joyce… into sewing them to fit if you tell her you lost weight. Also, you want Joyce to know you’ve lost weight.”

Hopper opens his mouth to speak but Seven is already gone, already following the bright thread that intersects and intertwines with Hopper's, the thread that in his mind’s eye means ‘Joyce’.

Other threads link to her… pathways to children and lovers and friends, but he stays with ‘Joyce’ for now. He likes her light, her warm colors… they make him feel safe.

“She knows you haven’t lost any weight, but she’ll pretend anyway and sew the pants because you asked her, and she likes being able to do things for you, and she believes you have your reasons. And also, she likes when you visit her at Melvald’s and mess up her displays, and when you bring her lunch. Ham and cheese sandwiches and potato chips. And the apples Flo gives you.”

Seven sucks in a breath and blinks, leaving his vision behind and returning to the now. Hopper is looking at him with an expression that is less than happy, so he chooses to ask his follow-up question to Eleven instead.

“What’s a Melvald?”

“You can read minds?” Hopper asks sharply.

Seven flinches away from the tone and from the question that has always brought him so much heartache in the past.

Everybody hated him so much when he used to do that, when he told them about the things he saw. He never really understood why. The visions, the colorful threads always seemed like the truth… but when he spoke about them to the Techs and to Brenner they always hit him or hurt him or called him a liar. 

“I’m sorry,” he fumbles out. “I’m sorry. I'm not... I can't pick out everything, every detail... it's more feelings, really, not thoughts, and... and it’s only sometimes, if I really try… or sometimes it happens by accident. I won’t… it’s bad. I know it’s bad. I’m sorry.”

He really is sorry.

His nose is bleeding. He wipes it roughly with his hand, careful not to get any blood on the sweater the big man gave him… gave him right before Seven did the _thing_, the _one thing_ always guaranteed to get him in to trouble because _it unsettles people Seven and you really ought to know better… telling your nasty little lies_…

_You need to learn. _ _You never learn._

He’s getting his blood, his lies, his filth all over this man’s nice, normal life and he’s _wrong_, he’s ugly and dirty, he's _bad.._.

And yet, also, very deep down, he's happy. He's been cut off from this power, as natural to him as breathing, by Brenner and the ankle band for so long. He'd only see dim snatches of color, only hear accidental thoughts... never like this, rich and full and clear. He thought he'd never get it back, and now...

“I have dreams, too.” The words come out soft and almost jumbled from his stupid, stupid mouth, and he knows, he _knows _they aren’t helping his cause. But, well… for as long as he could remember he has always been driven by some imp of perversity, a self-destructive sense of truth.

This desperate need to tell the truth is why he could never learn how to behave. It is why Papa never loved him.

“I have dreams. I know they’re lies, but they aren’t… sometimes the dreams are real. I dream something and it happens later… days or months or weeks later. And I don’t know… I don’t know if I dream these things because they happen or if they happen because I dream them…”

To his shock, the next sound out of his mouth is a wet sob, and he sees now that the figures in front of him are blurry because he’s crying.

“He wanted me to go into the Bathtub. He wanted me to go into the Bathtub because I see things in the Bathtub, like dreams but not… I’m in the dreams, not watching…I’m part of the dreams then. But I didn’t want to go in because… because…”

He hiccups, feels large hands on his shoulders and flinches away from the touch, unable to decipher the intentions behind it, unable to distinguish between ‘comfort’ and ‘punishment’.

“I was bad,” he stammers brokenly, crying. “I’m bad... I'm bad. I'm sorry. I did a bad thing. I didn’t want to go into the Bathtub, but I did and… I got scared, I was so scared… I’m bad… and I ran…”

“Shhh, kid…”

“The Bathtub?” asks Eleven, her voice wavering dangerously. Both men look at her - Seven from his seat on the couch, Hopper from where he is crouched next to him, trying desperately to stop the poor boy’s tears.

“Yes,” Seven hiccups out unhappily.

“With the water. In the big room?”

Seven nods.

Eleven’s eyes narrow and she clenches her fists in her lap.

“Papa?” she asks.

Seven sucks in a strangled breath and nods again.

“You’re the one who got away?” he stutters out finally when she doesn't speak again, although it’s not a question, not really. There’s only one person alive she could be… a legend, really, for the Numbers who remained.

“I remember,” Seven continues when Eleven meets his gaze. “I remember the lockdown the night you escaped. Alarms going for hours and hours. And after… just a few days after, we all got the ankle bands. They can limit our powers and they can cause pain if Papa wants. And later they put trackers in so they could find us no matter what. No one could run away after that. But you did. We all knew, we all talked about it. You got away.”

There is no recrimination in Seven’s voice, just something like awe. It may even be relief, or happiness, or longing. He looks at Eleven, then Hopper, then Eleven again, almost overwhelmed with excitement. 

Eleven feels the accusation implicit in Seven's words anyway. He doesn't mean it like that - in fact, she's been one of the only sources of hope for the Numbers for so long - but it doesn't matter. She blames herself more than anyone else ever could…

She left them behind. She ran, but others remained. And all her attempts to help them afterwards failed.

"How long?" Seven asks, almost breathless. "How long ago?"

Hopper answers after a moment, when it becomes clear that Eleven can't.

"Two years. I found her in the woods a little over two years ago."

"Two years," Seven echoes.

It is clear when he says it that he doesn't quite know what that means, but he repeats the phrase anyway, the awe still in his voice, like the words are a magic spell or talisman that gives his experiences a new meaning.

Perhaps they are. So little truly belongs to this boy. He has so few things to hold on to.

Even this - this understanding of a set period of time passing - is important. 

This sense that the world is expanding, gaining texture and color...that it is not what he thought it was... that it is perhaps what he hoped beyond hope it _could_ be...

That’s... well, it's everything.

Everything.

Eleven very much wants to cry, but she doesn’t.

Instead, she gives Seven a gift. A bit of trust. She feels that perhaps she owes him that... and also, she wants him to understand and not cry. To smile again.

“Papa built the Bathtub for me," she says, finally. "To… to dream in. Like you.”

“Like me?” Seven’s voice is so soft and fragile, as is the thread of hope woven within the question.

“Yes. But I… I saw a gate…”

“The gate!” Seven nods frantically. “It wasn’t a lie! You saw it, and I saw it, too! And the monster…”

“He wanted to open the gate. To get through. I hated... I didn't want to go back in, so I ran away...”

Seven sucks in a breath and is suddenly filled with a terrible shame. He is not always quick and logical, but as he listens to Eleven the fractured pieces of what he saw today as he escaped and the implications of what the little girl is saying stitch together and form a new picture.

It is a picture which condemns him and his unwitting mistake.

“It’s…” he glances up at Hopper, fearful again, and overwhelmed with guilt. “It’s open. The gate... I wanted to get out of the Bathtub and I was scared and I screamed and the wall cracked and... I’m sorry. I was so… scared. It’s open now. I think… I think it might be my fault. I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

Eleven’s fingers find Seven’s again, and this time he wraps his own around her, her hand a steady anchor.

"It's okay..."

"None of this was your fault, kid," Hopper interrupts. The cop doesn't understand at all, doesn’t understand a single word being said, but he knows this one thing at least is true. 

"It was!" Seven shouts, cutting him off. The noise is loud and startling, though the volume doesn't hide how broken and distraught Seven sounds. It is so loud that it frightens Seven, who hunches over and drops his head down, breathing ragged.

A framed picture on the wall wobbles dangerously before dropping to the floor and bouncing harmlessly on the ground. Nobody notices.

"It was," Seven repeats, volume lower. "I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to...”

“No...” Eleven nods. “You didn’t mean to. It’s okay... it’s okay.”

Seven takes in a ragged breath and lets it out as a sob. He sits quietly for a moment and the other two let him cry.

His tears seem like an extension of the rain outside. For a while it feels like they’ll never stop, like they may keep coming and coming until they drown the boy... but that’s not how people or tears work in real life.

Slowly, slowly, Seven quiets down.

When his tears subside, Eleven reaches out again. She stands and goes to the couch and wraps her arms around the boy’s shoulders. 

“Like me,” she murmurs softly, her voice rich with understanding, with an empathy that breaks Seven’s heart. “The same. Not alone. It’s okay.”

Seven blinks up at her, eyes wide and wet and desperately hopeful.

“Brother,” Eleven says after a moment, meeting his gaze, a gentle smile on her lips.

It takes Seven a minute, a long stretch of time working his way back through his limited understanding of family, before he finds the right word. When he finally finds it, however, it feels so right.

“Sister,” he says softly. “Sister.”

There is a long pause, during which Seven collects himself as best he can. Hopper straightens up, takes a step back from the couch and his young charges, his breathing harsh.

The cop’s eyes flick over to the many deadbolts on the front door of the cabin, and then they methodically re-catalog every spot in that small space where he has stashed a gun. There are many such spots, but he decides he’s going to find more as soon as possible.

And he’ll need to set up more booby traps in the woods tomorrow when the rain stops. Right after he finds that box of clothes for Seven and drops them off with Joyce to be hemmed.

“Sorry,” Seven whispers, glancing up to where Hopper is hovering next to him. It’s pretty clear that he knows what the cop is thinking… the boy is not quite able to meet his gaze, still weighed down as he is by guilt and self-loathing. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t go rummaging around in my head, kid,” Hopper says with surprising mildness. “And don’t be sorry.”

Hopper is looming again, but something in his voice or face or mind must comfort Seven a little because this time when Hopper lets his hand hang loosely at his side, the boy feels safe enough to reach up and touch it. Hopper wraps a meaty fist around Seven’s long, still-chilled fingers and allows him a small smile.

“Can…” the boy hesitates. “Can I still be Steven?”

“Sure,” says Hopper. He nods to the little girl curled up next to Seven. “This one’s named Jane on the fake papers I’m getting made for her. She also goes by El.”

“Short for Eleven,” Eleven says. “It’s…”

“A nickname.” Steven smiles widely, much wider than Hopper thinks is technically warranted for something as pedestrian as a nickname.

Still, it’s a nice smile. Seven - Steven - has a bright, warm grin, and it’s much better than the crying and a thousand times better than the look of naked fear, so Hopper plays along.

“Yeah, kid,” he says. “Good to have a nickname. You can even be Steve, if you wanted.”

“Steve…”

Again, the cop can’t quite understand the awestruck, happy look on Steve’s face, but he decides not to question it.

And Steve smiles and closes his eyes and rolls the word around in his head, because for the first time in his life he has a name that sounds _right_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's GOT a NICKNAME!! *Pterodactyl screech*
> 
> Kudos and comments are always much loved and appreciated, you most amazing peeps of mine!


	3. I walk the line

**Now**

This is the most logical step, Six thinks.

Brenner talks at him, and then Williams talks at him, and their words wash over him like water. They dress him in civilian clothes, in jeans and a t-shirt and a denim jacket and shoes. They give him a wallet and the license with his face and fake name on it. They give him a shot in his arm with a long needle and they check the ankle band to make sure the tracker light is still blinking. They pile him into the back of a van and drive away from the Lab.

They are modelling their strategy after something Brenner calls 'guerrilla warfare' and 'full immersion'. Brenner says it was a popular tactic in the last war the country fought. Six seems to remember someone saying that they lost that war, but he doesn't think it'd be smart to point this out.

They let him out of the van and say – go. Come back when you’ve found him. Rendezvous points here, here, and here.

Six knows the plan.

It's a logical plan because of course, of course Seven would go to the children.

Seven was always good with the little ones, even when he was a little one himself. The smaller Numbers would run to him when they were still in the Nursery. They were rarely allowed to interact extensively with each other, the Numbers, but when they did, when Seven could be with them, the youngest experiments would climb up his long limbs and cling to him and whisper all their secrets in his ears.

And out here, in the big, wide world? He’ll always find them. Children. They’d come to Seven, see the gentleness in his face, sense his uncanny ability to understand them.

Adults had never done anything for Seven. Only hurt him. He would never go to them if he had any sort of choice in the matter.

When he’d been tasked with recapturing his lover the last time Seven managed to escape, Six had been unsurprised by the reconnaissance information Brenner gave him. Left alone to stalk his prey, he’d tracked down him down easily.

He’d watched the Wheeler’s house for only a day or two and then he’d gone straight to the school. Sure enough, Seven had been there, alone and vulnerable. No witnesses, no complications.

Sitting under a tree in the nearby woods, waiting for his new friends, the sunlight on his pale face. Eyes dreamy-thoughtful, as always. The sight had triggered a pool of warmth in Six’s lower belly. He’d wanted to have Seven then, to press the doe-eyed brunette down onto the soft ground and kiss him, rut against him, push inside and claim him out in the open air for all the world to see.

Instead, they’d fought. Or, rather, Six had used his heightened strength and the threat of further violence to subdue Seven and forcibly take him back to the prearranged rendezvous point, where the Techs were waiting in a van to drive them back to the Lab. 

Six stands under the same tree he’d found Seven under all those many weeks ago and watches the kids. This vantage point offers a good view of the parking lot and playground outside of Hawkins Middle School, and is half in the woods and isolated enough that Six can see everything from a safe distance. There are many of them, the children, and as he looks on they break off into groups and run around, throwing things, yelling.

It all seems a rather purposeless waste of energy from Six’s position.

He hasn’t seen all of them, Seven’s kids, but he knows a few of their names and a few of their faces. They're are five in total, and Brenner said they are twelve years old. Six knows Seven had found shelter in the basement of one of their houses, the Wheeler house, the last time he got out. Six had watched and waited for a little while that time, just to make sure there wasn’t going to be any reason to call in the Clean-up Crew. 

He has a plan. It’s the same plan as last time. He’ll find and follow the kids, and they will lead him to wherever Seven is hiding.

Soon.

It needs to be soon.

Seven’s been gone for days now, for three full nights and two and a half days, and Six misses him.

But he is calm.

Truly.

He is focused.

He lifts his arm and presses a hand against the thick, unyielding solidity of a nearby tree. His eyes drift closed and he focuses on breathing in and out.

Seven taught him that… taught him how to breathe slowly.

The bark under Six’s hand crackles and smolders as the fire that lives just under his skin and that always rises to the surface when he is angry or scared or upset threatens to unleash itself fully, to blast out and away and destroy everything before turning back on Six and swallowing him whole.

Someday, if the rage ever takes over completely, Six might actually just catch fire, might go up like a tinderbox, or a phoenix. He won’t burn, though.

He’s never the one who gets burned when the fire comes out.

Seven taught him how to calm himself down. He’d run his fingers through Six’s hair and press against him and breathe slowly, a steady rhythm. Six would unconsciously match those breaths, and eventually the rage would ease and die away. The fire would retreat and the inferno would be reduced to a simmering flame flickering deep in his chest. Seven taught him how to focus and count and breathe until he was calm again.

It was a skill he’d desperately needed to learn. There are scars on Seven’s skin, burn marks. Seven heals fast and well, and always has… but the scars are there.

Testaments to the times when Six failed to learn control.

He lets the bubbling, raging heat out in a narrow, controlled burst as he presses his palm against the tree.

He breathes. He has learned.

It is still difficult. It always gets more difficult when Seven is gone from him. Six gets angry sometimes, and life in the Lab means that he is often at least a little bit scared… but no emotion quite matches the sheer, blinding panic he feels when he doesn’t know where Seven is, when he can't see or touch him.

When he feels steadier, he drops his hand from the tree.

A hand-print remains, blackened and burned into the bark, hot embers cooling.

He is calm. He needs to be calm.

He needs to focus.

The consequences of not being focused are unimaginable.

He watches the children play their games. They should be done soon, should be going home soon. Should be leading him to Seven soon.

Soon.

He’ll have to be patient, whatever happens. He is not so good at improvising and coming up with plans, but he knows he'll need to be watchful and patient and think before he acts. Wait for an opportunity. Seven will be more careful this time.

Six can’t let his runaway lover slip away.

There’s a shout, and Six’s eyes land on his target. A boy with curly hair, Dustin Henderson, is slow-jogging across the parking lot of the school. Six is a good distance away and well shielded, but he can still see everything he needs to see.

Dustin. Six knows about Dustin.

Seven was stubbornly silent about much of his brief time Outside, fearful that any information might be used against him. It turns out he was right to be afraid.

He mentioned Dustin, though. He couldn’t help himself. Dustin is funny and interesting and sweet. Dustin is Seven's friend, the one who came up with his new name that Six hates. Dustin is special to Seven.

That makes him a target.

Six watches the child run, evaluates his competition. He thinks he should perhaps be angry, resentful of Seven’s shared affections, but he finds he isn’t. Not really. He can no more resent Dustin than he could resent the clingy little Numbers in the Nursery, or Seven himself for caring for them.

Seven was made to be loved. Seven was made to love others.

It’s just the way he is, and always has been.

But now, as then, Six finds no such generosity in himself.

He is no more inclined to share Seven with Dustin Henderson than he was eager to let Seven coddle the younger Numbers, most of whom he made a point of scaring off quietly when Seven wasn’t looking.

He’d done his best to build a cocoon of safety and isolation around Seven, and has successfully maintained it for years. Six is most content when Seven showers him with all of his gentleness and care and undivided attention, and when Six is the only one able and allowed to love Seven back.

And Six’s scare tactics are very effective.

As Six watches, the boy’s head swivels around, his eyes darting to the woods like he’s looking for something. It’s strange, almost as if the boy senses a predator’s presence…but Six feels perfectly secure in his position overlooking the school…

“Having fun, stalker?”

A crisp, sarcastic voice snaps Six out of his revere.

Now, it is never a wise move to sneak up on someone who can summon and direct fire with a wave of their hands. That is just common sense. And, to be fair, it rarely if ever happens that a person interested in surprising Six also possesses the skills to manage such a feat.

The small child who somehow crept up behind Six without him realizing would likely never know how lucky she was that Six’s self-control was unparalleled.

He spins around all the same to find a girl standing about ten feet behind him, her arms crossed and her gaze hard.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asks.

He looks at her. Her pale skin is covered with freckles, and she is tall but too slight for him to consider her a physical threat. Her eyes are critical and searching, however, and Six has a sense that she is reading him and seeing past his walls with uncanny sharpness. Her hair is fire-red, and its color and the way it tumbles around her face reminds him of some familiar, long-lost thing and endears her to him against his will.

In his surprise, he forgets how to act, and his cover story flies out of his head like it was never there. He takes a step towards the girl, falling back on familiar, aggressive intimidation tactics without thinking.

She holds her ground, however, and another voice pipes up from behind a tree.

“Don’t even think about it!”

Another boy, tall and dark and gangly, steps out into view. Six can see that he is holding some kind of weapon, a length of rubber tied between two points and pulled back taunt with some projectile in place, ready to fly out and hit him. In the face of this, it is all Six an do to force himself to ignore his instinct to react violently. His fists clench and his teeth grind together as he searches for the right thing to say.

How the hell did Seven always manage to do this? To… talk… to children?

“It’s okay,” he tries, voice hoarse with surprise and fear. He raises his hands in what he’s been told is a universal sign of defenselessness and non-aggression, though of course for him this is intensely ironic. He is never defenseless, not even when his hands are up.

Especially not then.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he clips out, trying another empty, meaningless phrase. Seriously, how did Seven get children to trust him? Too late, Six has finally discovered something that Seven is better at than he is.

“Who the hell are you, asshole?” the boy snaps, his grip on the projectile weapon tightening.

“And why are you stalking us like a freak?” the girl asks.

“It’s okay,” Six repeats. “I… uh… I’m looking for someone.”

No, no, that’s wrong, that’s not what he means. He can’t spook Seven, can’t let him know he’s looking for him, can’t tell the children, can't tell anyone…

“Guys! Did you get him?”

There is a thundering movement that startles Six horribly – more children. He recognizes these ones, the three boys coming up the hill and through the woods towards the clearing where he is pinned down and exposed to the eyes of the very people he was trying to keep his distance from. Michael Wheeler, William Byers, Dustin Henderson.

So. Not only is has he been cornered… he’s been cornered by Seven’s friends.

“Got him,” the girl says.

“Told you there was someone watching us!” says the boy with the slingshot. “It’s him! I saw him up here yesterday, too!”

“Holy shit, what the hell?” Dustin waves his hands. “Someone was actually stalking us!”

“He doesn’t look like a government guy,” Mike says, skeptically.

“A spy!”

“Who are you?”

“Answer the question, creep!”

There are too many words being thrown at him all of a sudden, to many eyes watching him.

And, crucially, this is a new experience for Six. Six has gone on many missions now, many trips into the world outside of the Lab, all in the service of Brenner’s secret agenda. This is a fact and yet... those missions were always quite different from this one.

On those missions he had handlers, and monitors, and he never needed to talk to anyone. He wasn’t really supposed to be talking to anyone right now. On those missions he could be dangerous and silent, could throw his fire at the target and then retreat to the quiet safety of the van.

And Six, unlike Seven, has never really been good at talking to people. He has certainly never been good at dreaming up stories or reacting in ways that get people to like and trust him.

Six doesn’t know the correct answers to any of the questions being lobbed at him. He feels his control slipping.

He wants to be back in the Lab, in his room, with Seven… Seven and no one else, no one else, no one except maybe Papa because Papa could tell him what to do and he wouldn’t have to think any more about what answer was the right one because Papa…

And Seven would…

Well... perhaps he can take one of the kids hostage, and then…

“What the fuck?”

“Holy shit!”

The children are lined up in a row like targets to be picked off, their eyes wide and mouths open. Their gazes are fixed on him but, Six belatedly realizes, not on his face.

He glances over and, to his surprise and horror, sees that his hands are still up in the air and are now glowing orange with the furious fire trying to escape from his fingertips.

It’s not right, the ankle band should be helping him dampen this, and even without it Six has perfect control.

Or… he had perfect control.

Seven is gone.

Breathing isn’t helping.

Like a domino effect, Six can feel everything slipping. So much has gone wrong, and so fast. He got caught, and then he forgot his cover story, and then he gave the game away, and now…

He’s losing Seven. With each moment that passes he is losing _Seven_…

He lets out a yowling shriek, whips his hands around and lets the fire out. Wild bursts of flame ignite and are thrown up and away towards the tops of the trees, which ignite with an explosion of force.

The kids scream. The fire flies over their heads and crashes into the trees like waves crashing on a beach.

It only misses them because Six knows that if he kills any of them Seven will never, ever forgive him.

Filled with a terrible frustration, the rogue experiment roars and moves towards the children, ready to hurt, ready to take. This has always been Six’s fallback position whenever things get too confusing.

He only makes it two steps.

The rock safely nestled in Lucas’s slingshot shoots free. Lucas loosens his grip by instinct, surprised and terrified, but his aim is true.

The stone smacks Six in the center of his forehead.

Direct hit.

The older boy, stunned, hovers upright, swaying. For an long moment that is only an instant in actual fact, it seems like he might remain standing, might regroup and attack again.

In a blink, however, he is tumbling back, vision going suddenly dark.

He's lost a few minutes by the time he finally opens his eyes again. He thinks so, anyway. He instinctively feels like time has passed.

As he comes around, he is very conscious of his back pressing against the lumpy forest floor. His head is throbbing, and the kids are hovering around him, leaning over him and studying his face, chattering loudly. He feels an insistent tug on one of his jacket sleeves and grunts in annoyance and no small amount of pain.

The smallest of the five, William Byers, is tugging his sleeve up to reveal the numbers that have been tattooed on Six’s arm for as long as he can remember.

006

Again, Six only realizes an instant too late how bad this is. 

No.

Mistake.

Unacceptable.

Six has no other options now. The kids know what he is. Unacceptable. Papa said no... absolutely not. Can't let them know.

With his orders still fresh in his mind, Six starts gearing up for a fight again, ready to hurt them all and live with the consequences – because these kids are problem and he _needs_ to fix it – but the group makes a joint noise of surprise at the sight of Six’s number, and the next words out of Mike Wheeler’s mouth stop him in his tracks.

“Oh. Oh! You’re… him. You’re like him, aren’t you? You’re like Seven?”

Seven.

_Seven._

“Seven?” The word comes out desperate from Six’s mouth, and just like that all the fire is gone, all the rage.

“You know him?” Dustin asks sharply.

“Where is he?” Six asks.

"He knows Seven?" Lucas echoes.

"Seven couldn't throw fireballs," Max chimes in.

"Makes sense though..." Will adds thoughtfully. "He said they did experiments..."

"Where. Is. He?" Six growls out again, sitting up and forcing the kids back and away. The aggression in his voice is unmistakable, but the kids, having now latched on to a familiar and exciting idea and provided some context for who and what Six is, don't seem particularly concerned that the older boy is going to hurt them.

Rather, it is the question itself that sends a worried shiver through the group.

“You don’t know?” asks Mike, and Six can suddenly read vulnerability and fear in the kids’ faces. He feels those emotions mirrored in himself. “He’s not… you don’t know where he is?”

Six shakes his head.

“We don’t know where he went,” Dustin chimes in, voice sad. “He showed up a couple months ago and only stayed for a week. He just disappeared one day. He was supposed to wait for us to get out of school. When he wasn’t there, we thought he left or… or the bad men took him.”

“Bad men…?”

“Yeah, from the place you were kept. Hawkins Lab... but..." Dustin voice takes on a sharp edge of self-reproach, tapering off into little more than a murmur. "...But we couldn't find the Lab, after. He never told us where it is... so we couldn't rescue him. He's trapped and we couldn't find him...”

"We don't know..." Lucas starts comforting his friend, but Six cuts him off.

“He… he isn’t with you?” Six stutters out, picking up on the most salient point as far as he is concerned. "He isn't with you."

In a mere moment, the whole of Six's plan has unceremoniously crumbled around him. Seven isn't here with the kids... and if he's not here then where is he?

Is he alone in a ditch somewhere, cold and bleeding? Is he with a stranger who will hurt him?

Seven has never seemed more out of reach than he does at this moment, and the thought of it threatens to overwhelm and cripple Six.

Failure, however, is not an acceptable option. Six understands that better than most.

He thinks fast.

“They did find him,” Six says, surprising himself as a new cover story pops almost fully-formed into his head. “The bad men found him. They brought him back to the Lab, and he was with me. We were together, but he's not there now. We… we escaped again, a few days ago. Together. We had to hide and we got separated. In the woods. I’m looking for him. You can help me, right? I know he wants to see you again. You’ll help me find him?”

“You don’t look like he did,” Max pipes up suddenly. Her eyes narrow and Six curses her in his head for being just a little too smart.

“Yeah,” Mike adds. “You’ve got real clothes, for one. Seven only had those weird hospital clothes.”

“I…” Billy scrambles. “I took them. The clothes.”

“You stole those?” Lucas asks, skeptical. “Really? Because it’s definitely, like, a look.”

Billy doesn’t know what that means, but he knows in the abstract that stealing is not considered part of a socially acceptable economic exchange, so he attempts to plaster a parody of contrition on his face.

It must work, because Max hisses at Lucas to shut up.

“Are the bad men after you, too?” Dustin asks.

“Yeah, yeah they are,” Six swallows. “You can help me? Help me find Seven?”

The kids hesitate. Behind them, the fire from Six’s earlier outburst is still crackling slightly in the high branches of the trees. It has mostly died down, losing momentum and failing to catch on the still-green bark, but Will Byers looks back in time to see a flaming branch drop to the ground and burn out ominously.

“He talked about you,” Six says, seeing the lingering distrust and knowing, suddenly, how to fix it. He keeps his voice soft and calm, uses the same tone he has for gentling and soothing Seven.

“He talked about you all the time. About how you helped him and gave him clothes and food. He liked the cookies, and his sleeping bag in the basement. He liked playing with the toys, with the teddy bear from the movie about outer space and... and that game with the little monsters. He missed you so much. He said you were his friends.”

He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes wide and looks up at the kids with all the sincerity he can muster. He lays himself bare and allows them to see all his fear, his desperation, his need.

_Seven_.

The kids blink. In a moment pregnant with possibilities, they share a silent communication between themselves.

It only takes a gentle push to tip them over the edge.

“Please,” he murmurs, and he isn’t even really pretending anymore. “Help me.”

He meets their gazes and does what Brenner does – he lies by telling the truth.

Six finds he’s not so bad at improvising after all.

Steve watches quietly as Hopper measures out a length of razor-thin wire slightly longer than the space between two large trees.

They are together in the woods. It is morning, and it is cold out, so Steve is wrapped up in a warm flannel shirt layered over another shirt and is wearing a musty-smelling jacket on top of that. The top layers are borrowed from Hopper – obviously Steve has no clothes of his own – but his pants and shoes are new.

Hopper got into his truck one morning and when he came back, he brought Steve sturdy, striped sneakers and a pair of jeans. Eleven then taught Steve how to tie the shoelaces on his first-ever very own pair of shoes.

They’ll get more later, Hopper said. He left a box of things with Joyce to be hemmed.

Steve, who has only ever worn one kind of clothing in his life – tan scrubs, starchy and scratchy – finds himself weirdly fascinated by the texture and feel of these new garments. So many different kinds of soft.

He loves the way they smell. He’s never had clothes that smelled like anything before, and these clothes smell like all sorts of things, like warmth and wood and musk and detergent and dust, like forests and kitchens and bedrooms and people.

When he’s feeling anxious – and he’s felt anxious a number of times over the past three days – he closes his eyes and presses his face against the fabric. Hopper and El know to give him a little space when he does this, because it means that Steve is getting overwhelmed and that he needs them to stop telling and showing him confusing things.

He does this at night quite often when he can't sleep. He has his own small bed in his own small room. It's little more than an old army cot in a converted closet, really, but to Steve it's a novelty. He's almost never had to sleep alone before, has never had any space that was just his and no one else's.

It's daunting to stay there when the lights go off. 

He can shut the door... he can chose to be alone or with others... but while this seems like the best of gifts in the daytime, at night it is harder to accept.

He tries to soothe himself by burying his face in his pillow. It doesn't always work, and when it doesn't he is eventually forced to go and wake up El or Hopper.

There have been many times since that first night, the night Hopper brought him in out of the rain, the night El called him ‘brother’, when he has almost collapsed under the weight of it all – of all that came before, and all that might come later. Of all the bright brilliance of this brave new world.

The first time he left the cabin again and saw the limitlessness of the sky above he head, he went to completely to pieces, stunned senseless by terror and wonder. All the fear and hope that had been building for years before that moment came crashing down. Hopper had wordlessly picked him up off the ground and carried him back inside and sat in his chair and watched over Steve while Steve lay curled up on the couch, buried under every blanket he could find, his eyes tightly closed.

But he has survived it… the crushing shock of it all. He is still here.

He is still here.

He has taken to rubbing his fingers over his jeans and fiddling with the buttons of his oversized flannel shirt when he’s distracted.

Right now, though, he is not distracted – he is watching intently as Hopper replaces the trip-wire that Steve set off a few nights ago.

Steve only makes one repeated movement, a small one that belies his calm exterior. With his right thumb he absently strokes a thin burn scar on the underside of his left wrist. His fingers curl around his arm, unconsciously protective.

Hopper doesn’t think Steve even realizes he’s doing it.

Satisfied with his work, the cop motions to the boy, who crouches down next to him to see what he has done.

“We put that there, okay… and then when the wire is tripped, the trap hits the bullet and it makes a loud noise… like an explosion. BANG!” Hopper grins, making a motion with his hands to emphasize his point.

Steve flinches back at the sharp word, remembering all too well the fear it invoked when he tripped over a similar trap that first night. Hopper chuckles and then seems slightly ashamed of himself for startling him.

“It’s okay, kid. We’ll set this up and other traps around the woods. All different kinds. If anybody comes, we’ll hear them. You're safe. Nobody’s gonna find you here.”

Steve looks over at Hopper, unconvinced.

Steve likes the big man. He was scared of him at first, but he’s seen glimpses of his mind, read the threads of his emotions, and he knows now that Hopper is mostly bluster and noise and good intentions. Mostly.

And Hopper is so very… normal.

He is easily winded when he lifts and carries heavy things. He eats food that Brenner would no doubt reject as having minimal nutritional value. He grumbles at El for taking too long in the bathroom. He stretches out in his worn-out recliner and watches TV and drinks beer until he falls asleep. When he sleeps, he snores. He likes Joyce, the woman who works in the store, but he can’t bring himself to tell her.

He cannot read minds or summon fire or bend reality or throw people through the air with his mind.

Instead, he has wire and mousetraps.

“There are a lot of them,” Steve reminds the cop.

Hopper picks up his pliers and the remaining spool of wire and stands up, the joints in his knees popping so loudly that Steve can hear them from four feet away.

“They have guns,” he adds, an edge in his voice.

“So do I,” Hopper snaps. Steve doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near miss. “I was in a war, kid, and I’ve been a cop for longer than you’ve been alive. I know how this works. I’ve learned a thing or two. They’re not gonna get anywhere near you and El. They come in these woods and they’re toast.”

Steve blinks at him, confused. “Toast?”

Hopper shakes his head and eyes up a clearing a few yards away. He’s going to need to buy more wire.

“Means they’re dead, Steve. I’m gonna keep them away from you.”

“Kill them?”

Hopper side-eyes Steve. “If I have to.”

Steve doesn’t have an answer for that. He has never killed anyone that he knows of, although it was all so confused that last day, the day the Bathtub exploded under the sheer force of Steve’s panic and terror, that he can’t be completely sure he hasn’t, either.

There are certain people he wouldn’t mind seeing gone if he’s being honest with himself. His life would be exponentially better if certain Techs just didn’t exist anymore.

And Brenner… but Brenner is almost too awful for just not existing. Steve has no real understanding of Hell as a theological concept, but he is picturing something similar right now as a suitable alternative for Papa.

There are also people, though, who Steve absolutely does not want to see hurt.

Hopper makes for another line of trees. Steve follows him, thinking hard, his fingers worrying his scar again.

Steve has never really been in a world without Six in it. Sure, there were the years before they first met, but he was young then and that time is a blur in his memory. Once he first saw Six there was almost never a moment afterwards when they were not a unit, a singular thing.

It is only in the last few days that Steve has truly, seriously contemplated a Six-free existence.

He should run, he thinks.

He should be running now.

Away from here.

Away.

Steve would like to think he is wiser and more experienced than he was the last time he tried to escape. He’d like to think he’s the kind of person who can learn from his mistakes.

The last time he didn’t run far enough. Six found him in less than a week.

He is still too close, far too close, to the Lab and Brenner and Six.

It isn’t safe… not for him or anybody around him. It was only sheer dumb luck and Six's dubious sense of mercy that prevented the kids and their families from getting caught in the crossfire last time.

Steve stares hard at Hopper’s broad back.

He should run.

He should leave the cabin. He should protect Hopper and El.

Of course he knows that Papa wants him returned and contained at the Lab. He knows also that if Brenner discovers how close El is and recaptures her, it'll be a thousand times worse for her then it could ever be for him.

He knows that by now Six is most likely drowning in the swirling pit of his own unending need, and that his lover will do anything Brenner says if it means he gets Seven back in his arms.

He supposes he should be more angry with Six than he is. More frustrated, more fearful. In this moment Six is an enemy, not a friend.

Steve understands, is the thing. He knows why Six does what he does, even if he can't accept it. He can't even be truly upset with Six about it.

Six needs Seven. Six needs to love Seven.

That's just the way Six is and always has been. 

Seven - Steve - should run.

He should learn from past mistakes.

It’s just… it's just that it doesn’t feel like a mistake.

Hopper and El don’t feel like mistakes.

_Staying_ doesn’t feel like a mistake. If it did...

Steve has always gone with his instincts, even when they brought him pain. It would be ridiculous, perhaps, to change the habits of a lifetime.

Or it would be ridiculous, perhaps, to trust that things would work out now when they never, ever have in the past.

Steve closes his eyes briefly and sighs softly. He breathes.

One day, one hour, one moment. And then the next.

For so long it was all about getting through one day, and then getting through the next. Taking the small things he’s been given and loving them and using them to keep going, to keep getting through the day.

Big-little things. Being grateful for food, for showers, for paper and pencils, for sleep, for pleasure and smiles from Six. Spotting a Tech with an unusual tie or funny hair, making a face at Papa behind his back, sharing his thoughts with his best friend, having a nice, peaceful dream. 

All things to be treasured. All things that are 'now'.

You can survive if you don’t think about the future. If you just take each moment as it comes.

Six taught him that.

It's not an easy lesson to learn, but it's the reason why he understands Six's need to keep him, even when it hurts them both.

Seven is Six's one treasured thing. The source of so many brief moments of almost-happiness. And it was the same for Seven for a long time - Six was everything, the only thing that mattered.

And then, one day, it just wasn't enough anymore. Seven wanted more... wanted to _be_ more.

And Six...

Six.

_Six._

Six, the one Seven never wants to hurt.

Six would like it here, Steve thinks.

He’d like the clothes. Six talked sometimes about the clothes he got to wear on missions, and it was obvious to Steve that he valued them highly for the sense of identity they temporarily gave him. If Six was here, he could grow his hair out and wear whatever he wanted.

He could look on the outside how he felt on the inside. That's important, Steve thinks, for someone like Six. Maybe it's important for everyone in the whole world.

He could try Eggos and ice cream.

Steve loves ice cream. Hopper buys two kinds - chocolate and vanilla with bits of cookie dough. Steve ate two cartons by himself the morning after he arrived at the cabin. He made himself sick, but it was so good. Even being sick was good, because it was something that was his.

Maybe if Six was here he could try ice cream, and wear normal clothes, and learn to drive a car for real and get a real license, and watch TV with El. The three of them could talk to each other about the new smells and new feelings and new thoughts they were experiencing out here, and Six could sit with Seven under the trees and watch the sun set.

Steve, he reminds himself. Not Seven.

But Six doesn’t know any ‘Steve’.

He only knows Seven.

(Are they different, after all?)

“There is someone like me,” Steve says, finally, fiddling with his scar, conscious that Hopper has slowed his movements and is watching him thoughtfully while he works. “Six. He has better powers. Papa likes them a lot. But Six didn’t mind that I didn’t have powers like him. They didn't think I could do anything at all for the longest time, but that didn't bother him at all. He still thought I was special. He's good. He takes care of me.”

Hopper leans against a thick tree and folds his arms, his gaze steady on Steve.

“You guys were friends?”

Steve nods. “Six says we are ‘friends’. He said we are ‘husbands’.”

Steve doesn’t need to be a mind reader to see the wave of shock flash across Hopper’s face. It's startling because Steve isn't sure what triggered the look of surprise... and it's troubling because Steve can clearly read an underlying disgust in the older man's eyes as he processes this statement.

Yes... shock. Distress. Disgust. 

Steve feels suddenly ashamed, although he doesn’t know why. He is instantly worried that he has made a horrible mistake.

He is worried that he has said or done something that will make Hopper get rid of him, throw him away.

“Where did he get that word? Husband?” Hopper asks sharply, standing at his full height and folding his arms.

Now it's Steve's turn to be surprised. 

“He said…,” he stutters out, confused. “He said it was for when people are together. When they take care of each other. Always.”

Hopper sucks in a deep breath, his eyes piercing.

"Oh yeah?"

Steve nods. "Isn't that what it means? Being together?"

“Sev… Steve," Hopper corrects himself. "Steve, did Six… touch you, ever?”

Steve looks at the cop for a brief moment and nods again.

“Yeah. Always. He was the only one who did, usually. Nice touches.”

“Okay, not… not like… did he ever…?”

Hopper stops, unfolds his arms and places his hands on his hips, tilts his head back and stares at the tree line above their heads like it might give him some crucial piece of information he is missing. The trees must not give him what he wants, though, because he lets out a deep, frustrated sigh and glares up at them in annoyance.

It takes Steve a moment, but soon enough he realizes that the cop is at a loss for the right words to say.

The thought makes him feel a bit better – he isn’t the only one who is confused.

And, now that he thinks about it, it dawns on him that...

“He touches my penis,” Steve adds, almost as an afterthought. “And I touch his penis. Nice touches. Is that what you mean?”

The alarmed look on Hopper’s face tells him that it is.

Steve smiles, bemused by the sight. Poor Hopper.

“Yes," he says. "We received basic sexual education and have had intercourse. But only together.”

The cop is blinking furiously and his mouth has dropped open. It would be really funny if it wasn't also somewhat worrying. 

“Brenner…" Hopper growls. "He didn’t do this? He didn’t… force you and Six, or anything… to… to do anything you didn’t want to do? To… be husbands?”

Steve blinks at Hopper.

He thought this was understood. All Brenner ever did was force Steve to do things he didn’t want to do.

All the same, he doesn’t see the link between the two concepts, or why this matters so much to the cop.

“I mean… did Brenner say you two were married?” Hopper tries again. “Did he say you were husbands, that you had to be husbands? Did he threaten to hurt you if you didn't have... intercourse?”

Steve shakes his head, ready to spit out a vehement 'no', but then pauses, considering.

"No," he says, finally, thoughtfully. "But he was glad when we did. He wanted me to take care of Six. I guess part of that was intercourse. Because it made Six happy and calmer when we did it."

Hopper makes a small, pained noise.

"But I don't think Papa liked it, really. He was always very..." Steve searches for the word. "Not mad... pinched? He'd make a face sometimes. I don't think he liked that I'm a boy and not a girl, and that Six wouldn't always listen to him when he was with me. I distracted him, and also Papa never really liked me because I'm not special. And sometimes when Six acted out he said it was my fault because I wasn't... wasn't doing enough. And then..."

Steve is about to talk about what happened two and a half weeks ago, the first time his telekinetic powers manifested. The words are ready in his throat, but they get lodged there, immovably stuck. Something - fear or pain, maybe - stops them. He can't force them out, and he can't summon the memory in his mind, and he finds also that he doesn't really want to try. He swallows the words down again and shakes his head as if to clear it.

Hopper looks at him quizzically, but Steve brushes it aside. He doesn't want to talk about that now, but there is one thing he does want to make clear - namely, that he would never have used the word 'husband' if it had been tainted that way by Papa.

“Six brought it to me, the word,” he says. “He said he’d overheard someone using it. Women are wives, men are husbands. When you want to be together, when you look out for each other. And you kiss each other and touch each other. When you only kiss each other and nobody else. That’s… that’s being married. Six said so.”

He looks up at the cop, who is studying him with an unreadable expression. Steve would very much like to dip into his thoughts right now, but Hopper told him not to go rummaging around in his head and he is trying very, very hard to be good for Hopper.

After a long moment the older man lets out a long sigh. He suddenly looks very tired.

“Shit. Okay. It’s… it’s okay, Steve, I’m not mad. Not mad at you. Just… shit, how old is Six? Jesus, kid, how old are _you_?”

Steve doesn't know. He does math in his head, pieces together the few clues he has. In the end, though, he can only guess.

“I’m more than 14 years old and less than 20. Six is the same age as me.”

Hopper stares at Steve for a long, uncomfortable minute, and then lets out a huff of laughter with absolutely no humor or happiness in it. His shoulders slump and to Steve’s eyes the older man seems strangely diminished.

“Right,” he says. He rubs his brow with a large hand. “Right.”

"How old is El?" Steve asks, suddenly curious.

"We don't know, but we think she's about twelve now," Hopper growls. "And she is way too young to be anyone's wife."

“What’s wrong?" Steve probes. "Is it a bad word? Husband?” 

“No kid, it’s not a bad word. It’s… it’s just usually people are older than you when they become husbands and wives. It’s a… it’s a commitment.”

“Com – mit – ment,” Steve sounds out.

“Yeah. Like you said… like Six said. It’s for always. Or it’s supposed to be, at least. That’s a big decision that no one else should make for you or force you into.”

It doesn’t seem like that to Steve. He blinks and then shakes his head.

“It was always only Six with me. From when we were little to now. Brenner liked it because it made Six happy, at first. Then later... later sometimes he used it to hurt us, to make Six behave. But there was never anyone else. Of course we're husbands. It’s always been me and Six.”

“Yeah, kid, but it shouldn’t have been like that,” Hopper replies, voice suddenly sharp. “You should've had a choice. If there’s never been anyone else, then you didn’t really have a choice. You understand? You picked Six because there wasn’t any other option… because there wasn’t anyone else for you to be with besides him. It's not your fault, or Six's, but Brenner... he... I'm going to... there are lots of people in the world, Steve. Brenner should have given you a choice. Maybe you’d like to be husbands with someone else, if there was someone else you liked better. Maybe Six would.”

Steve doubts very much that Six would. Six has always been very single-minded regarding Steve - Seven.

But, Steve knows, too, that Hopper is right. There was never anybody else. That is the beauty and the agony of it all.

They’d shared that room, that small room with its single bed. One day long ago, back when he was still little and shy and obedient, a Tech brought Seven into that room and said – this is where you sleep now. And Six had never not been there. Six had never not been a part of that room, and of Seven's life.

And in that room the rest of the Lab, and Brenner, and the tests, and the punishments – they had all taken on an otherworldly quality, like they belonged somewhere else, beyond and outside of that space. It was ‘there’ and ‘here’, and Six and Seven’s relationship was part of ‘here’, not ‘there’. It was separate, and it was theirs alone, even when Brenner tried to make it something else.

Six touched Seven and comforted him and made him smile sometimes. He kissed him. He was the only one who ever had.

There had never been anyone else because no one else had ever been there in that insular world they'd built for themselves.

It doesn’t change anything… not really. But, on the other hand, there are possibilities now.

Wasn’t that what Steve really wanted? Hadn’t he been running away from stagnation and towards the promise of something else?

Towards the promise of choices…?

Chocolate or vanilla with cookie dough?

“I don’t know,” Steve says, honestly.

“It’s not a… it’s not a decision you have to make right now, kid. But just know that when you want to make those choices, you can. I’m not going to let anyone take that away from you again, okay? Not you or El. If I have to close off these whole woods with a perimeter fence and gun turrets, I'll do it. ”

Steve wants to believe Hopper. He wants to very much.

He should run.

He should.

He absolutely should.

“Why toast?” he asks, watching Hopper measure out another length of wire. His fingers find their way back to the silvery-pale line of his scar. “Why would the bad men be toast? I like toast.”

“I don’t know, kid, it’s just an expression.” At Steve’s blank look, Hopper sighs and chuckles lightly. “I guess because it’s burnt bread. They’ll be burnt like toast.”

Oh.

Right.

Burnt. Burned. Burning.

Sure.

Steve knows all about that.

** Then **

_There was something Six would say sometimes when he was trying to get Seven out of his darker moods. He'd phrase it as good advice, as a lesson to be learned._

_He'd say there is no such thing as the future. He was correct, as far as it goes. There was certainly no such thing as a future for any of the Numbers... not one they had any say in, anyway. _

_Yes, Seven would reply, and that's the point._

_But Six would shake his head._

_The point is, there is no point in being upset about it. You shouldn't think about it. You don't need to think about it._

_Just be grateful for each moment that isn't awful. Just be happy enough with the things you have._

_By that logic, at this moment, both Six and Seven should be happy._

_It is one of the times when they are together._

_It happens like this sometimes. Less often as they grow older, as Six settles into his role as Brenner’s plaything. For now, though, Papa thinks it is best to structure training sessions this way._

_Seven senses that Papa is driven by a certain tenuousness in the air, an uncertainty centered around Six in particular. These days a delicate balance is struck. They – the ‘Them’ with a capital ‘T’ – are introducing Six to the outside world. To missions._

_They've had trial runs. They are moving ahead. The future Brenner sees is clearly full of possibilities._

_Six is skilled enough, now… and old enough._

_Now they just need him to be docile enough._

_You need to be very calm on missions. You can’t act out where Other People can see. If they see your powers and realize what you are, they’ll hurt you and maybe even take you away. You’ll disappoint Papa. You’ll lose everything._

_You need to do exactly as you are told._

_Hold the fire. Hold it still._

_Release it when I say._

_ONLY when I say._

_In the training room Six stands and huffs and sweats and practices holding the fire that burns under his skin. He practices releasing it when Papa says so – only when Papa says so. There are wrist monitors on his arm and wires attached to his temple, tracking his progress, applying numbers and measurements to the wonders of the invisible world._

_He tries. Sometimes he fails. Sometimes he doesn't. He tries again._

_It is not easy, controlling the fire. It manifests only when Six feels it deep inside, and when it comes it is as ungovernable as the emotions that drive him. In many ways Six **is** the fire, and asking this boy, still a child really, to make such profound distinctions in his own psyche is ludicrous. _

_Papa wants Six to be a weapon, but Six is not a sword or a gun._

_Elemental, there is little to be done to make the fire obey._

_But still, Six should be happy today._

_Sometimes Six is alone in this room, practicing with no one but the Techs and Papa for company… and often they aren’t even in the room but are rather waiting and watching behind a glass wall._

_Today, Six is not alone. Today, Seven is there, sitting quietly in the far corner in the training room._

_When he can spare a moment, Six looks over and sees the tousled mop of brown hair and the familiar, mole-dotted skin. Sometimes when he looks the boy is bent over pieces of paper and a box of colored pencils, a look of concentration on his face as he entertains himself. Other times Seven's head is turned, his gaze fixed warily on the men behind the glass wall, watching them as one might watch a predator lurking in the distance._

_Sometimes Seven looks back at Six. Sometimes those liquid-brown eyes meet Six's blue ones._

_Sometimes red lips quirk up in a comforting smile._

_When that happens, Six smiles back, and then summons a fireball and makes it dance briefly before directing it full force at the target painted on the far wall about fifty feet away. He shows off a bit - who can blame him?_

_Six is grateful that Seven is there. Seven is the best thing, the thing that makes Six most happy. Six would be perfectly content and willingly following his own advice about being happy right now if it wasn't such difficult and frustrating and exhausting work to train._

_Seven, too, should be happy. He is safely tucked away where no fire from Six’s fingertips can accidentally hurt him. He has a small table and a chair, and paper and pencils and crayons to keep him occupied. Papa and the Techs are around, just on the other side of the wall, but they are not hovering over him or even really paying him that much attention. He can sit and draw undisturbed._

_However, Seven is not happy. Seven is quiet and anxious._

_Seven does not wear a metal band on his ankle - there has been no great escape yet, so such restraints are not yet mandatory for Numbers - but Six is wearing an experimental version of the band on his wrist. It is meant to dampen and focus but not eliminate his powers._

_Purely a precaution, Papa said._

_As such, while Six is struggling to tap into and control his now-limited abilities, there is nothing to keep Seven from using his own sixth sense to pick up on a horrible tension in the air. He does not know what is going to happen, but he knows in his gut that something will. And he knows, too, that it will likely be something bad._

_He remains hyper-vigilant, restless and unable to settle. He draws but is only half-paying attention to what he is doing. In his head, Seven can feel a heavy pressure, and his ears are filled with a sound almost like buzzing._

_It is the low rumble of a storm approaching._

_He would follow Six's advice if he could, but he can't._

_Instead, he worries._

_He worries about a future he cannot control._

_A jarring beep comes over the loudspeaker, signalling Six to stop. A break, and not a moment too soon from what Seven can see. _

_Exhausted, Six steps away from the training area and slumps back to the corner where Seven is sitting. Sweat has plastered his hair to his neck and forehead and his eyes are cloudy and distant. He leans up against the wall and slides down it until he hits the floor. Legs splayed and arms loose, he hangs his head and takes deep breaths, trying to hold back a sob. _

_Seven doesn’t hesitate._

_He slips out of his chair and kneels on the ground next to Six. With one hand he brushes sweaty, golden curls off Six’s face, and with the other hand he gently touches his chest. Six’s breath stutters and he blinks frustrated tears away and leans towards Seven, who in turn curls around him, protective and comforting._

_Papa’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, a disembodied sound, to tell them that the exercise is over. Seven registers a slight feeling of relief and then doesn’t pay anymore attention to whatever nonsense the man is saying._

_Seven knows what he is expected to do – what Papa expects him to do. Papa expects things from everyone around him - things from both Six and Seven. He knows what the Techs say. He can read Papa's grim acceptance of Seven's necessary role and match it with the jibes and chuckles of the Techs._

_On some level Seven bitterly resents it._

_He resents always, always being seen as an extension of Six. He's not a person to them. He is only a toy, a reward, a sedative drug. The easiest way to keep a dangerous boy sated and content while they make him do difficult and impossible things._

_He resents it. He hates it._

_Hates Papa’s tacit approval and the Techs’ lewd, knowing smirks._

_But another part of him can’t hate it, not really. All the rest of it, Brenner and the Techs and the weight of all those eyes are distant, secondary concerns now, little more than a dream. They don't understand him, and never could. Not in any way that matters._

_Because it’s Six._

_It’s Six, and he’s tired and upset with himself and trying not to cry because it hurts, the things they make him do… he’s exhausted and hurting and Seven can’t stand it. He can’t stand by and watch Six suffer without doing something._

_It is Six he is helping, and it is Six who matters most. Not Brenner._

_It's always only been Six._

_“Breathe,” he whispers softly in Six’s ear as the boy struggles to contain the fire that rages, the pain that burns. Six has described it in the past as an ache but worse, a desperate hunger, his body turning against itself and its natural form. The ankle band both helps him control it and hurts him on the inside, cutting him off from himself. _

_Seven's powers aren't anything like that, and he has never felt at odds with himself, never felt like his own worst enemy... but Six has always been different. He has always burned brighter, always been so much more than anyone Seven has ever seen._

_It breaks Seven's heart sometimes._

_He picks up Six’s hand and places it on his chest so Six can feel the steadiness of Seven’s own breathing and pace himself to match._

_Seven then reaches up and pulls off the wires, the monitors, the arm bands. The Techs will need to reattach them again if they decide to make Six continue, but for now the boy needs them off._

_Seven understands, knows what Six needs… he needs to feel free, to feel whole in himself, to feel like he isn't being vivisected where he stands. They all want him to be something extraordinary, but sometimes he just needs to be ordinary old Six. He needs to feel this even if it’s just temporary, just pretend._

_"I liked the last fireball," Seven says._

_"Yeah?" Six's voice is raspy._

_"Yeah, it went really far."_

_"Did you like the one that went in a circle?"_

_Seven grins and nods._

_Six smiles back, suddenly shy, and tucks his head in against Seven's neck. _

_"Good," he whispers. He breathes as he is bid, slowly and deeply, and inhales Seven's familiar, calming scent as he does so._

_The peace doesn't last long. A few minutes at most._

_Then Agent Scott strides in._

_Seven glances up and reads his intentions. Agent Scott wants to straighten up the training area and reattach the wires. He is bored and he carries that subtle arrogance that most Techs do, but on the surface his thoughts are mostly benign. _

_Six, however, does a strange thing when he turns his head and sees the man walk in._

_He tenses under Seven’s hands._

_He has no reason to that Seven knows of. Six tends to treat Techs with a distant, blank deference, and he shouldn’t be more nervous around Agent Scott than he is with any of the others. _

_If anything, he should be more comfortable with him... Agent Scott took him on his second outing, was his handler out there in the Outside world on their last trial run. He knows Scott, and they have, in Seven's mind at least, a kind of special bond because of it. _

_Seven might even admit being a little jealous at the thought. Six can only tell Seven about the Outside, not share it with him. Seven isn't allowed out. Seven is peripheral to all the wonderful adventures Six gets to have now. _

_He can feel a division between them, small but still there. A difference in how he and Six see the world._

_One day, Six might even leave Seven behind for good, become the ultimate weapon for Brenner and the rest, and forget that Seven ever mattered to him. _

_And when that happens, what will become of a powerless, superfluous Number?_

_“Alright, Seven,” Agent Scott says, coming to a halt a few feet away from where the two boys are curled up together on the floor. “Step away now.”_

_Seven shakes his dark thoughts away and looks up and meets the Tech’s gaze. Scott is looking back at him with a frank bemusement, clearly assessing Seven critically and finding what he sees mildly entertaining._

_It doesn't matter, only..._

_They usually have more time, and Six is still horribly tense. Seven hasn't really done his job, though for the life of him he can't figure out why Six is suddenly nervous. Seven looks at Six and sees that the other boy’s eyes are wide and darting between Scott and Seven, his mouth turned down at the edges._

_Seven tries to see, even though his special skills don't work so well with Six - it is a strange thing, but they are always a bit limited with Six and the other Numbers because he is like them even though he isn't, even though he is truly not special and not powerful like they are - and even though he has promised himself that he will not read people’s minds without permission._

_He tries with Six but he can’t see much. Just a blur of fear and shame. Difficult to sort through... and the pieces he does recognize, he doesn't like._

_"Seven," Scott repeats, and Seven nods slowly. Reluctantly, his slips his hands away from Six and inches back towards his chair._

_Six, for his part, hums unhappily and crawls back up to his feet. Seven watches the walls go up around his friend, watches him bury the small bit of pleasure and pride he had felt a moment ago underneath a mask of indifference._

_Six doesn't argue, doesn't give voice to his mysterious discontent. He even stands still as Scott reattaches the wires._

_Seven is so busy trying to piece together the confusing images he'd picked up that he almost doesn't see it._

_In truth there is almost nothing to see._

_Almost._

_Agent Scott reattaches the wires. He touches Six's arm, reapplying the wrist band first. Six is fine. He is steady and still._

_Then the Tech moves to attach the electrodes to Six's temple._

_Six stiffens._

_One of Agent Scott's hands, carefully placed so that no one but Seven can see, reaches up to keep Six's head steady. _

_The hand touches his temple. His hair._

_It’s the hands, the Tech’s hands... they make Six flinch._

_Fingers dance across the boy's forehead before they wrap themselves around some errant curls. _

_Scott’s eyes meet Six’s and then he very deliberately gives the boy’s hair a sharp tug._

_The thing is, the gesture doesn't seem to cause surprise or even pain, isn't designed to startle or cause a huge reaction... it is too subtle for that, and too meaningful._

_Seven can read look in Agent Scott's eyes now, and it isn't a look of anger or derision. _

_It's a knowing look. A smirk. _

_The tug of the agent's fingers is a trigger. A memory. _

_A reminder._

_A reminder of thick fingers wrapped in curls, tugging, pulling, pushing down, pushing his head down, making him open his mouth, making him obey when he doesn't want to, when he doesn't want to, I don't want to, **I don't**..._

_Seven can see the storm break a moment before it happens, but there is nothing he can do to stop it._

_Agent Scott is thrown up against the wall in an instant, one of Six's hands around his throat, the other pressed against his chest. Six is younger and smaller than the agent, but his anger fuels him, gives him new strength and a beserker's rage to make up the difference. The Tech makes a noise somewhere between a whimper and a shout, and Six growls out a warning sound that sends chills up Seven's spine._

_It's hard to separate the smell of ozone and flame from Six's practice session and the smell now rising from the horror occurring in front of Seven's eyes, but burning cloth and burning flesh do have their own distinct odor, and suddenly it is everywhere, and Scott is screaming._

_"Six!" Seven cries, and bolts up to his feet. _

_Not for Scott's sake, or for Brenner's, Seven throws himself Six, desperate to make him stop before he does something that he cannot come back from. Something that will not just result in more of the punishments that make up their everyday lives, but which will also leave a mark, gray and damaging, on the brightly colored threads of Six's soul._

_He is not as strong as Six, but he knows how to throw his weight around when he needs to. Seven races up behind the raging boy, wraps his arms around Six's middle, and yanks him back until they are both tumbling to the ground._

_Six yowls, thrashing blindly at an enemy he can't see. _

_His hand grabs at Seven's wrist where his arm is wrapped around him in a parody of a lover's embrace. _

_But Six still holds the fire, and his touch hurts Seven, burns his flesh._

_Seven cries out and is forced to let go. He loses his grip but the shocking sound of Seven in pain is apparently enough to bring Six back to himself and make him stop struggling. _

_He releases Seven’s wrist immediately, a whining cry of fear tearing out of his throat. He pulls himself free and throws himself as far away from his lover as possible to keep from hurting him further. _

_There is a wall, a corner, a spot of sanctuary a few feet away from all of this, from the burned Tech and the hurt, innocent Seven. _ _Distance, beautiful distance... Six crawls there, finds a solid barrier, pushes his back up against the wall, panting and crying. _

_He tries to get away from everything... from the terrifying threat of 'now' and the lurking fear of 'then'...the events of the past that he thought were gone rear up, huge and terrible. In his panic his control threatens to slip again and he groans in horror, staring down at his hands as the flames crackle within his skin._

_"Shhhh... breathe..."_

_The voice jars Six...for a moment he doesn't know where it's coming from. But it is soft and gentle and..._

_"Slow... shhhh... breathe..."_

_Seven, the sweet fool, has come back to himself, has shaken off the shock of being burned. He sees what is going on. He pushes past the pain, rolls over and crawls a few inches towards Six. _

_"Shhhh..." Seven murmurs, blinking back tears, his voice remarkably steady. "It's good. Breathe..."_

_He whispers and hums and soothes the boy who hurt him. As he does so he cradles his burned wrist to his chest, and Six knows - knows like he knows his name, like he knows the color of Seven's eyes, like he knows his own special place in this rotten world - that in spite of Seven's accelerated healing abilities the burn will leave a mark, a scar._

_Six moans piteously and tries desperately to make the fire go away again. He pushes his hands against the ground, against himself, but he is hurting and nothing helps._

_Seven hums a song, something made up, something tuneless and faint and meaningless, but Six latches onto the sound, tries to use it as a lifeline in the fog._

_Seven... _

_Seven..._

_"He's bad. Scott’s bad. He tugged. Six, what did he do? He hurt you?"_

_Six sighs and closes his eyes and doesn't answer._

_He can't answer._

_ Can't find the words. _

_It hurts inside. _

_He clenches his fists and fights to hold his fire in. Tears stream down his face from the effort, and he grits his teeth against the sheer force of it._

_He rides the tide out. There is nothing else to be done but ride it out._

_In a moment Brenner and the other Techs will storm in. They will place both boys in solitary and interrogate Six extensively on the incident. Six will find the words to tell Brenner about his outing with Agent Scott, about the fingers in his hair, about what came after._

_Agent Scott, still alive despite the burns, won't be for much longer after Brenner finds out what he did to his prize experiment. Brenner has rules after all, and his rules about behavior and comportment and sexual release are the most important... _

_He is trying to do impossible things. He is trying to find that delicate balance. _

_It is unacceptable. How can he shape Six into the ultimate weapon when there are all these petty distractions?_

_Brenner will fume, and Agent Scott will disappear._

_Afterwards, Six and Seven will be returned to their shared room, and Seven will cradle Six in his arms while Six, strung-out and exhausted, drowns in self-recrimination. _

_Six will kiss the healing burn on Seven's wrist again and again, and again many times throughout the years, and always with some heady mixture of guilt and possessiveness churning in his gut. _

_Seven, in response, will hum thoughtfully and thread his fingers through Six's hair... and he will not tug on his curls when he does so._

_All this will happen. _

_A future no one can control._

_But for now, the two boys sit a few feet away from each other, hurting and frightened and wrapped up in their own little worlds... yet trying, always trying to reach out to each other... and for all of Six's excellent advice, they remain as far away from happiness as they could possibly be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agent Scott first popped up in ‘Danger Illustrated’ if you recognized the name but couldn’t place it. 
> 
> I’m very much playing this AU by ear so if there’s anything you’d like to see more of in this universe please let me know and I’ll try to fit it in! Thank you so much for sticking with this crazy story - as always you are all lovely stardust readers and kudos and comments are most loved and appreciated ❤️


	4. I can't get next to you

The downside of aligning oneself with children is, ironically enough, exactly the same as the upside – namely, that no child could ever be mistaken for a government agent.

They chatter. They jump around. They make twenty different plans in as many seconds.

It is organized chaos.

Six is bundled up and swept away from the clearing in the woods before he fully has a chance to understand what is happening. The rolling waves of his frustration and anxiety have barely calmed, yet he is surrounded by tiny bodies and moved quickly with little to no chance to respond. Even the most hardened government official would have to acknowledge the efficiency of this impromptu kidnapping.

He is dimly aware that he should report back to his handlers in the van, but he also knows that doing so without alerting the kids to his duplicity would be impossible.

Besides, he is still wearing his tracker, carefully hidden by his sock… he is still on a leash. In these unusual circumstances improvisation is allowed.

He is quite extraordinarily aware, too, that his hold on the situation is tenuous. The kids trust him now because of his relationship with Seven, but that could all change with a single wrong word. He feels as though any moment the children might vanish like vapor, and with them his best chance of finding his lover.

The kids take a shortcut to Mike’s house, and, irony of ironies, Six soon finds himself curled up on the same couch in the same basement where Seven found refuge all those months ago.

“Three months,” Mike tells him. "Three months ago."

“Three and a half,” Dustin corrects, pacing in front of Six.

Interesting information. Six's sense of linear time, days and months and things like that, is always muddled in the timeless, endless, repetitive calendar of the Lab.

“We thought he was long gone,” says the tall boy named Lucas.

Lucas... and the red-haired girl is Maxine.

Maxine. _Max_. She's a bit wary of him, still. Smart.

“We need to get some new clothes for him,” Mike says. “And we should get him something to eat.”

“We need to find Seven,” Six insists, interrupting. “How? How do we find him?”

A shadow falls over the group when they are reminded that their first, best friend from the Lab, the one who initiated them into this wonderful world of superpowers and secret identities, is still missing in action. Dustin lets out a wounded noise and Will goes twitchy and sad.

Six both loves and loathes how much they care about Seven. On one hand there is a kind of kinship to be found in loving the same thing.

On the other hand...

His fingers idly pick at the worn upholstery as he watches the emotions play across their faces. There is such simple, earnest affection there, and it is fascinating to him even as it irritates him.

He is not used to having to share, but he will need to adjust. For the moment, anyway.

They consider the problem in the brief pause, and then the various plans and schemes start tumbling out again.

“We’ll look…”

“We can’t put up posters or anything.”

"Of course not, he's not a missing pet..."

“We can ask Hopper!”

“Why the hell would Hopper know anything?”

“He’s the chief of police! He’d know if there was a strange guy hanging around, or if someone like Seven…”

“Steven,” corrects Dustin. “He hated ‘Seven’. It’s Steven.”

Six feels a wave of rage and hurt rising up at Dustin’s assertion. He succeeds in repressing it, barely. It's not important, he tells himself. It's not a rejection... and even if it is, it doesn't matter. None of this will matter once he gets _Seven_ back.

He stays quiet and considers the possibility that this ‘Hopper’ might help him find Seven. Might even help him transport the lost experiment back to the Lab if he can convince the man that it is his duty as a policeman to do so.

“…If someone like Steven got hurt and ended up in the hospital.”

“He won’t be in the hospital,” Six says.

It's true, he won't be. Six knows this because the Techs are watching the hospitals. If Seven shows up at one, Brenner's minions will pull both Six and Seven out of circulation immediately.

“You don’t know that,” Max says, her eyes soft and her voice sympathetic. She clearly thinks he’s discounting the hospital possibility because he’s worried it might actually be the case.

Six buries a flinch. It’s a good reminder to him that he isn’t supposed to know about the Techs watching the hospitals or anything like that, and he drops his gaze and shuffles uneasily to mask his mistake.

He belatedly realizes he’s copying Seven’s mannerisms… it feels slightly grotesque to do so, but it works in a way. It makes him seem like less of a threat.

It’s practical. A strategic choice. He should try to emulate Seven as much as possible while he's infiltrating this group - should be shy and stupid and kind.

It's obvious to Six that the kids love Seven very much. They love him in a way they could never love Six... not if he was himself. He is their enemy. A freak, a sociopath - that's what the Techs said. Even if he wasn't those bad things, he's not like Seven, not really. They wouldn't want to find and keep him like they do their missing friend.

Not that he wants their love.

Of course not.

Silly. Childish.

Max shakes her head.

“He can’t stay here,” she says.

“What?” Dustin flaps his arms. “It’s the best hiding place!”

“They found Seven, didn’t they? Maybe they figured out where he was staying. Maybe they were watching the house. Even if they weren’t, there’s no way they didn’t figure out where he was hidden after they got him back. They’d have made him tell.”

That idea stuns and silences the Party for a moment. Six doesn’t bother to reassure them when their worried gazes flick over towards him – it’s not like it’s not the truth. The kids don’t even know the full extent of Brenner's reach, the insidiousness of that isolated place hidden in the woods.

“They’ll come looking,” Mike says, voice tight with anxiety, eyes darting towards the stairs leading up to the rooms where his family sleeps in blissful ignorance. “They’ll come here first.”

“We need to hide him somewhere else.”

“Castle Byers,” Will pipes up. “It’s not going to be any good if it gets any colder, but he can stay there for now. During the day, maybe?”

“I’ve got an actual air raid shelter,” Dustin adds. “Which, umm, I’m not supposed to play in, but… he can definitely stay there. It’s warm and dry and there’s loads of food and board games.”

“Those places both work. If we keep moving him around, maybe we can keep ahead of them. They won’t know where he is, and they'll be stretched real thin looking for both him and Steven,” Mike nods.

“My parents are away this weekend,” Max says. “He can stay with me for a little while.”

Six listens. He doesn’t like the sound of any of this.

“What about Seven?” he asks, trying to get the kids focused on the primary objective. “Where will he go?”

There is another pause as the Party considers this.

“If he’s trying to find us," Mike says thoughtfully, "then… then he’ll come here, or go to the school. Those are two places he knows we hang out at.”

Well, that’s no good.

Six can’t risk Seven getting to the kids before he has a chance to snap him up. It’ll get messy if he has to drag Seven away in full view of the children, numerous and loud as they are... they will get in the way and it will be harder on Seven if that happens. He might struggle to forgive Six for... for hurting them. And he'll need to hurt them, if it comes to that. The Techs will be forced to intervene if there are too many civilian witnesses, or if either Number is at risk of being damaged in the process.

It''ll be better if Six takes care of it. He has more restraint than the Techs do. He has more to lose.

On the other hand, Six does have hostages now, inconvenient though they are. They are game pieces that cannot be discounted. If it helps him achieve the objective, he'll do what he needs to.

There will be tears and silence and sleepless nights when they get back to the Lab. That is to be expected.

No matter how this shakes out, there will be pain. Seven may not let Six touch him for a long, long time. 

“We’ll keep checking the places he knows, the hiding spots," Will adds, eyes trained on Six. "He knows where Castle Byers is, too… he might go there, or to Dustin’s. He’s smart and fast. He’ll stay hidden until it’s safe to come out.”

Six can’t help but throw Will a curious look when he says this, bemused by his characterization of the rogue Number.

He loves Seven more than anything else in the world, but even he wouldn’t say that the boy is ‘smart’. Certainly not if his test scores in the Lab were anything to go by.

Dustin, however, is nodding.

“Yeah,” the curly-haired boy says, sounding determined. “He’ll be fine. He knows how to stay hidden. He managed to escape the Lab, didn’t he? Twice.”

“And got caught again,” Lucas says, not unkindly, his eyes fixed worriedly on his friend. “Dustin…”

“Yeah, he got caught, but then he escaped again,” Dustin’s voice goes louder. “And he knows what to do and where to go now. He can read minds and see the future and he protected us when Troy was chasing us, and he’s a member of the Party, and he’s not going back to that creepy piece of shit Lab! We won't let that happen again... no matter what!”

Silence follows the outburst. Six can't help but flinch slightly at the raised voices, the rising tension that means potential trouble. In his experience nothing good ever comes from raised voices and arguments... not that arguments ever lasted long with Brenner.

There is no fracturing of the group, however. No one is hurt or punished. Six watches and swears he can see the dynamics of all these interwoven relationships shift - he experiences an echo of what Seven must feel looking into people's heads like he does.

Lucas sucks in a breath at the rebuke, but nods.

Something electric runs through the group, a kind of fierce determination. The have never been to the Lab, never even seen it or Brenner... they've not had anything but Seven's narrative to go on. And yet, whatever else Seven may have told them, whatever he said about his life before he met them, it is clearly enough to make these kids align themselves totally with him, utterly disregarding their own safety in the face of terrible odds.

If they could burn down the Lab and everyone in it, Six has no doubt that they would. All this, based on nothing but Seven's word... 

Six feels a strange mix of things – bewilderment, anger, shame.

It’s like they know a completely different Seven, like Seven led a completely different life in the few days he was away from Six during his last escape.

The question out of his mouth is not the one he means to ask.

“What is Troy?” he interjects quietly.

“Another kid, a big bully from school,” Lucas answers. “Sev... Steven was waiting for us to get out of school, but we all got separated going to meet him. Troy was chasing Dustin and Max and Will, and Steven knocked him off his bike and helped them hide in the woods. Even though it was dangerous and he almost got caught, he saved everyone and got them away from Troy.”

Seven did that?

That doesn't sounds like him. Seven doesn't knock people over.

Seven can't do things like that.

And yet, now that Six really thinks about it… yes. It does sound a little like Seven. 

Seven, who quietly, begrudgingly did as he was told but still stuck his tongue out at Brenner when the older man’s back was turned. Seven, who dreamed his dreams and saw his truths and whispered them to himself in the dark, no matter how many times he was told to keep quiet, no matter how many punishments and electroshock treatments he had.

Seven, who escaped three times from the Lab.

"We went to Castle Byers," Will adds, a small smile on his face. "That was the day Steven drew me my picture... the one where we're all superheroes. Just like something out of a comic book. We ate M&Ms and Steven drew."

It _is_ Seven, and the realization makes Six almost dizzy.

It's the Seven that was always hidden, always beaten down by Brenner. A side to the boy that Six, for all that he loves Seven and spent every moment he could with him when they were together in the Lab, was never given the opportunity to see.

Until now. Now he sees Seven... sees him through the eyes of others. Different, and the same.

These kids care so much about him, and they have such faith in him.

Six has faith, but not that Seven can protect anyone from hurt and harm, and not that Seven can save himself from the machinations of people much stronger than he is. That's why he needs Six, after all... to protect and care for him, to be smarter and stronger and faster than anyone else. To be all these things so that Seven doesn't have to be anything other than what he already is.

But if Seven is something else... something that doesn't need Six to take care of him...

And, of course, Six is the one trying to take Seven back to the place he hates with ever fiber of his being, back to the place that hurt him terribly.

Back to the place where more pain is waiting for him. For the both of them.

Because...

Because he has to. There's no other way. Six has to bring Seven back. That's his mission. If he doesn't, Brenner will find them both. He'll take Seven away, snatch him out of Six's arms and hurt him. Take him away forever, maybe, to that far off land no one ever returns from.

They have to go back. Seven needs Six to take him back.

Any other possibility is irrelevant... don't even need to think about it.

He pushes his doubts down and away, but the niggling fears remain, terribly confusing and strange.

“We’ll find him, Dustin,” Mike says, voice forcibly optimistic. Six makes himself focus.

“Yeah,” Dustin replies, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “And we won’t let them get Six, either.”

“That’s right,” Will affirms.

In spite of himself, Six feels weirdly pleased to be included. He tells himself it is only because this means his position in the group is relatively secure and his cover hasn't been blown.

"We should definitely consider burning the Lab down if we find it," Lucas adds dryly, confirming Six's musings. Max punches him in the arm.

“Six’ll need a name, an alias,” she chimes in. “If we’re going to pass him off as normal.”

“Billy,” Six says, suddenly.

He's just as surprised as the kids when he speaks. The word just pops out of his mouth before he can stop it.

Billy. The shortened, affectionate version of the name on his license, the name he always dons like disguise when he’s out here in the world. His second self.

William Hargrove on his fake-official documentation, and 'Billy' whenever someone asks.

A nickname. Billy. Bill-ee.

A name for a person who doesn't exist... and yet it is somehow something that feels like more than just an alias. It rolls off the tongue before ending with that soft 'ee' sound... it's more textured and complex than 'Six', that one single sharp syllable. 

It's something that almost belongs to him.

The kids look at him quizzically and he finds himself unable to hold their gaze.

“I heard it before,” he shrugs. “The name. Billy. I like it.”

And it’s true. Technically none of that is a lie, for all that Six is pretending.

He needs to focus.

He mustn’t forget that his mission, the most important thing here, is to find Seven or Steven or whatever he is calling himself now and bring him back to the Lab so they can go on being Brenner’s Numbers, tied together in an unbreakable bond forever and ever.

The mission is what matters. Brenner's eyes burn through him, and Six's desperate need for his friend, his lover, his husband has not lessened at all in the last few hours. He is still a raging inferno of want that only the safe return of Seven will soothe.

However…

He does find himself... liking… the name. The clothes. The kids. The stories.

The world.

In spite of everything... he does _like_ it.

“Okay then,” Dustin says, shrugging. “Billy it is.”

_It’s a blur of shapes and of light, and then…_

_It’s Six. _

_Six, looming tall, fire in his hands and in his sharp blue eyes._

_Rage and panic in his face, twisting his mouth... a familiar look that never brings anything but pain to those who get in his way._

_Looming over a line of familiar faces…_

_The children…_

_Dustin…_

_Six yowls and flings a giant fireball over their heads._

Steve does not bolt awake, quick and violent and gasping and loud.

He rarely does. Even when he has nightmares, he almost never jolts or thrashes or screams. He has learned, has taught himself not to do that. Life in the Lab meant being invisible and not causing a fuss – not even when transitioning from a sleeping nightmare to a waking one.

Sometimes he can’t help it. Sometimes the dreams are too awful, too terrifying. He wakes up screaming from those, snaps awake, lashes out blindly and falls out of bed. Once he even caught Six in the eye with a waving fist and left a deep bruise there. Poor Six... he was always responsible for calming him down on those rare yet terrible mornings.

Steve does not bolt awake or cry or flail now, but it is a close thing.

Instead, his eyes snap open. The air has temporarily vacated his lungs, sapped out by fear.

He forces a shaky, deep breath in, and keeps an iron grip on himself because the alternative is to go to pieces. He can't do that. 

He can't.

_The children…_

The dreams have always been a part of Steve’s life. When he was small, he thought that they were the same as being awake – just a different version of reality that he got to experience. He lacked proper context for so many of the things he saw, but they were always so complex and vivid. It seemed impossible that they could be anything other than the truth.

As he grew up, he learned that it was not quite that simple. He was shocked and deeply hurt the first time Six brushed them off as imaginary. If they were dreams, they weren't truth, and if they weren't truth they were therefore inconsequential. Only Papa's truth mattered, and that changed every day, until Steve gave up trying to understand and keep up.

And always, always, there were the dreams, and always there were people telling him that they weren't real.

_Not real._

What a joke.

Steve had figured out a few things about his powers the last time he escaped. Perhaps the most troubling, important lesson came when the kids showed him the TV and he saw on the moving, talking screen things he recognized from his sleeping visions.

Despite what some may think, Steve is no fool. He'd understood immediately that there were larger implications here, that this was information someone like Brenner would very much want to know. It was a something the man would want to use for his own benefit.

Steve had kept it a secret for precisely that reason, and also because, after some trial and error, he'd realized that he was still completely unable to control what and when he dreamed, that he had no more agency over his own abilities than he had had when he was still young and small.

He tells himself that it took Six years to master his fire, and even now he still struggles with it. He tells himself he'd rather have no powers at all than have something that would please Brenner in any way.

It's still annoying to not be able to control it.

Annoying and... pathetic. To have all this power and be too weak and stupid to use it.

Papa might have been right about him after all.

Still, he's learning. Figuring things out. He'd explained it to Hopper yesterday while they were watching TV, after their talk about husbands and toast.

Hopper was watching the news. Eleven was in her room, reading. Steve was sitting at the coffee table, playing with the box of brightly colored crayons Hopper gifted him the day before when Steve first expressed an interest in drawing.

Steve had been wary of the gift at first – at the Lab, such glorious items usually came with a steep price attached to them.

It isn't like that now, though. Everything has changed in the space of just a few days. Steve is just trying to keep up with it all. He is still adjusting to the idea that food, clothes, basic comforts and special treats are not always automatically part of some sort of unbalanced transaction.

At first the guilt and anxiety accompanying the gifts had been overwhelming, but Hopper and Eleven remain quite insistent that Steve _have_ things. That he have things that _belong_ to him and him alone, things that he doesn't have to work for and that can't be taken away.

He'd dropped and smashed a bowl the other day while getting cereal and was so sure that the accident would result in the loss of some item or privilege - his shoes, maybe, or the ice cream in the freezer. TV time, blankets, dinner, walks in the woods. Maybe he'd be locked up alone in his small sleeping space until he learned to behave.

Maybe Hopper would hit him.

None of those punishments happened. Hopper had been more concerned that Steve not hurt himself stepping on any stray shards of porcelain than he was about the damage to his property.

Afterwards Hopper gave him more cereal in a clean, unbroken bowl. Then a new pair of pants that fit him perfectly. Then a set of crayons in every color Steve could think of, and a pad of paper to draw on.

It's most peculiar.

Because, strangely, Hopper seems to get as much out joy of the gifts as Steve does.

He smiles broadly and huffs with satisfaction whenever he sees Steve using the crayons. He seems as happy as if he was using them himself, beams down like the sun as Steve fills page after page with drawings. He's even proudly hung ones Steve particularly likes up on the fridge, held up with colorful magnets for all the world to see. He grins whenever he sees them hanging there, and it makes Steve smile, too.

Bizarre. And yet it makes Steve feel happy and warm.

Hopper doesn't draw. The crayons are just for Steve, even though Hopper bought and paid for them. It would be weird enough if Hopper was merely graciously allowing Steve use them (especially since he's already taking so much - warm sweaters and hot water and every possible kind of food item he can think of, and all of it made possible by the older man's generosity), but, even crazier, the cop gets some sort of pleasure from Steve's happiness.

Brenner would never feel that way, nor any of the Techs. It's even unlike the shared satisfaction he and Six used to enjoy together in bed, when touching and fucking lead to mutual release... that was still an exchange where the needs and desires of both participants were clearly defined.

This isn't.

Steve feels like he is perpetually being wrong-footed by these curious interactions he doesn't understand, so he finally decides to consider it a strange, but not at all unpleasant kind of bargain struck between himself and the cop. It's a different kind of exchange, and if whatever Hopper gets out of it isn't obvious to Steve, it is apparently no less important.

In his quieter moments Steve meditates on acts of giving and service as potential sources of personal satisfaction and pleasure.

“Election is coming up…” Hopper murmurs half to himself, his eyes fixed on the screen while Steve scribbles on sheet after sheet of clean white paper, preternaturally focused on his current drawing of what looks like a complicated drilling machine.

“Reagan,” Steve says suddenly. Hopper looks over at him and Steve shrugs. “He wins. Lots of yelling and colored balls falling from the ceiling.”

Hopper sighs. “Well, that’s hardly a crazy prediction. That one of your visions? From when you're sleeping?"

Steve nods.

"Why would you dream that up?”

“I didn’t, exactly,” the boy replies. “I was dreaming of a family. A father and mother and an uncle and two little girls. The TV was on in the background. The man on the screen said Reagan won, and then they showed him and the red and blue and white balls.”

"I... I think you mean balloons, Steve."

"What are those?" 

"They're like... you know what, I'll buy some in town and bring them back and show you. Be better than me trying to explain."

Steve is pleased by the prospect, and both men fall into comfortable silence as the chatter of the talking heads on the TV fills the room.

“What was the family doing?” Hopper asks after a minute, curious.

Steve shrugs, smiles a little as he remembers how cozy and comfortable the family looked together in their living room. It looked like a fantasy life to someone like him, someone who had never had anything like that.

"Nothing. Talking. Talking about things I didn’t understand. Private. It was important to them, but… I don’t choose what I dream about. It’s not always things that are part of my life, or that I can change. The only time I can control my powers is when I’m reading someone’s mind, and even then I can’t see everything. I have to follow the threads, the strongest emotions. I really only see what a person is thinking at a given moment.”

“Mind reading. And you blew up the Lab with your mind,” Hopper adds. “That’s a good skill to have.”

“I wasn’t… wasn’t controlling that. That just happened.”

“Was that the first time?”

“N-no. It wasn’t. One time before that.”

The day after Six came back so furious and enraged.

The day Brenner decided to try out a new punishment on them both.

He looks over at the cop and twiddles his crayon between his fingers before continuing.

“I dreamed you and El, though. A lot.”

That draws Hopper up short. “You dreamed our futures?”

“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t have a good idea of time. I don't know if the things I dream happen before or after, or if they even happen at all. Once, I dreamed that Six was going to fall down some stairs at the Lab. I was able to stop him before it happened, so not all of that one dream came true. But then another time I dreamed about a Tech crashing his car on his way home, and then later I heard him talking about a car crash he was in like it happened a long time before I ever saw it.”

Hopper seems momentarily at a loss, as he usually is when Steve’s powers impact him personally. 

Steve also doesn't need to be a mind reader to see the quiet calculations going on in the cop's head. Hopper is wondering if there's any way they can use Steve's powers, harness them somehow, weaponize them. It speaks to a trait in Hopper that is not dissimilar to Brenner's greedy ambition.

However, Steve is not upset or offended by Hopper's thoughtfulness. If anything it is slightly reassuring.

He knows what Hopper is - a cop, a soldier, a fighter. He is the kind of man who is constantly taking stock of his assets, weighing strengths and weaknesses, identifying weapons and skills needed to prevail in a conflict.

He is not a new or unexpected thing. He kindness and generosity are revelations, but the rest is very familiar. Steve is just lucky that Hopper is on his side, more or less, and that he is using this analytical tendency to come up with ways to protect them all from Brenner.

It's too bad that Steve's powers are so unpredictable, unreliable, and in some ways utterly useless. If Steve could use them effectively he'd gladly do so... but he can't.

Hopper seems to silently agree with this assessment because he doesn't press the issue further. Instead, after a beat, the man smiles, and Steve can tell that he has laid aside his calculations for the moment in favor of teasing and comforting the boy.

“Well," the cop says. "That’s something. Did you ever dream anything good for me? Do I win the lottery?”

“What’s a lot- lottery?”

Hopper snorts. “Forget it, kid. But if you dream up any number sequences let me know.”

“I do get numbers sometimes. 618-625-8313. And 6.62607015. And…”

“Okay, okay. Well, I do know what one of those is – unfortunately – but we won’t go there. What were El and I doing in your dreams?”

“You were hurt, sometimes. Sometimes you were happy. Sometimes you were just here, living here. I don’t know. I don't know how we know what is... important? The family from before, the family in the living room... nothing they said made any difference to me. Papa wouldn't have cared. But I dreamed them anyway. Maybe it's not always who wins", Steve gestures to the TV, which is playing a clip of Reagan speaking, "that is important. Maybe it is small things, too. You were just always in the background of my head. Living, being there. I think… I think maybe I knew I needed to find you, somehow. So I dreamed you.”

Hopper had nothing reassuring to say to that. He seems pensive and more than a little troubled. Steve doesn't know about the concept of 'fate', so he is not concerned by the possibility of its existence... but Hopper does, and he is.

Fortunately, the conversation ends then, interrupted by El wandering in, plopping down on the couch, and changing the channel with her powers, much to Hopper's chagrin.

Steve hadn’t thought any more of it.

Not until this morning. 

_Six. _

_The kids._

All his worst fears realized.

Because he is alone and free from Brenner and Six and the Techs, Steve lets himself release a huffing noise of despair that is very nearly a sob before clenching down on his feelings again. It is all he will allow himself because anything more might unleash something much more terrible and uncontrollable.

The fear is still there, the agonizing terror that is ever-present in his chest… he has always had that, can't remember a time before his whole life was governed by fear... but since meet the kids that feeling is sharper now, more real. Instead of vague possibilities of hurt and destruction, there are very real threats directed at innocent people he cannot protect.

He feels a horrible wave of self-doubt. He should never have run away from the Lab.

He has put them in danger.

He has put everyone in danger.

He _is_ danger. Dangerous.

He crawls out of his cot, tugs on a thick, well-worn sweater with a frayed collar, and runs his fingers through his long, tangled hair. He tugs gently at the strands, forcing himself to focus on the sensation. It helps ground him somewhat. His fingers trail down his cheeks, his neck, his chest, touching flesh and fabric. 

_It's good_, he reminds himself. _These things are yours and they are good._

_Breathe._

_Find happiness in the things you have now._

_Hold on to them._

His breathing has almost returned to normal, though his anxiety remains a solid rock in his chest, when he final ventures out of his small room and into the cabin's shared living area.

Hopper is in the kitchen making breakfast, humming cheerfully to himself.

“Hey kid,” he says, sparing a brief glance over before returning his attention to the stove. He is already half-dressed in his sheriff's uniform, and his hair is still slightly damp from his shower. He looks so big and reassuring that it almost makes the boy want to collapse into him, fold himself in and hide away.

“How’d you sleep?”

Steve doesn’t answer right away, and when Hopper looks over at him properly he grimaces sympathetically.

“That bad, huh?”

The boy doesn’t answer directly, mostly because he isn’t sure how to put what he is feeling into words. He is hampered by old habits, the cold, comforting familiarity of silence, and the expectation that his feelings and fears will be dismissed, as they always have been in the past, as trivial and childish and inconvenient. 

A part of him wishes he was braver. Or at least brave enough to try again.

“What’s that?” he asks instead, eyeing the food in the pan.

“Pancakes. And I’m making you some eggs to go with 'em.”

“Eggs,” Steve echoes, trying to muster up his usual level of eager curiosity. He knows what those are, but not the other thing, the pancakes.

Pancakes are new. So many new and wonderful things. He could drown in these new and remarkable and beautiful and wonderful things.

Wonderful.

_Six. The children..._

_Fire..._

_Danger._

“Pancakes are kind of like waffles,” Hopper explains, smiling slightly as he stirs the contents of the pan with his spatula, oblivious to Steve's rising anxiety. “You'll like 'em, trust me. But I want you to eat some eggs, too. You need the protein. You’re too skinny.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

It’s an automatic response that he’s too tired to curb. They’ve talked about this, about Steve apologizing for everything, but he can’t always help it. Back in the Lab, 'sorry' sometimes made the pain and the demands and the confusion stop. Of course, sometimes it didn't, but it was also the only reliable weapon Steve had for a long time.

It is one he is trying not to use anymore.

He hates it because this ‘sorry’ has a predictable and unwanted effect – Hopper looks stricken.

“Don’t be sorry, kid,” he says, his voice the gentle growl of a father bear. He turns down the heat on the stove top and turns to give Steve his full attention - like Steve matters. “It’s not something you did wrong. You’re okay, you're fine as you are. I just want you to be healthy, yeah? Wouldn't be taking care of you right, otherwise.”

“I’m…” Steve is going to apologize again but wakes up enough to the situation to tamp down the urge before he can do so.

He shakes his head and rubs his face with his hands.

He wants to trust. He wants to so much. He wants to be brave, to put his heart in someone else's hands, to tell them about the terrible burden he carries. But it hurt... it hurt last time, when he escaped and tried to be free and failed... failed... was dragged back to the Lab by Six. Too weak to stop it. Too stupid to explain, to make Six see.

He's only been here four days. He's only known Hopper and El for four days.

He is desperate, still, from the stress of the dream, and he needs… he needs…

“Hopper, I need…” 

With a dawning sense of realization, Steve discovers, to his horror, that it is not a choice any longer. Stress and fear and pain and loss and love rise up like a wave, overwhelming him. It's bubbling over like soup on a stove, it's spilling over...

“Hey… hey, kid…”

Before he knows what’s happening Steve is wrapped up in a hug, his face pressed close to Hopper’s chest.

He’s crying a little, but he’s safe.

Safe.

_Six..._

_Fire..._

_Danger..._

“Talk to me, son,” the older man rumbles.

“I had a dream,” he whispers, the words coming out unbidden, pushed forward by overwhelming fear. The tears come, and they wet Hopper's clean shirt. “It was bad. Bad. I… I need… can you…?”

“What is it?” Hopper pulls away just enough to cup Steve's face and look him in the eye. “Something that happened before, at the Lab? A memory? Someone hurt you? Or is it something that you think is going to happen?”

“It’s… Six. And… and the children. From before. From the last… last time… I…ran. It's going to happen. I think it's going to... he found them, and...”

Hopper rubs Steve’s back comfortingly.

A door opens and closes and El walks out of her room. She is still wearing her pajamas, a solemn frown on her face. Hopper doesn’t let Steve pull away from the embrace, and once she takes in what is happening El wanders over and wraps her small body around Steve, too.

Oh, oh... he doesn't deserve this. He is small and weak and useless and he doesn't deserve this comfort.

_Be happy with what you have now, Seven_, Six's voice reminds him.

_Take it what you can get. Why not? They won't believe you, anyway._

_Not real. Not real._

_The dreams aren't real._

_You're not real._

_Why would they ever believe you?_

After a moment, Steve finds the courage to continue. He needs to say it, even if they reject it... him. Even if they call him a liar and fool, a dreamer and a child. Even if they look at him like Six and Papa and the Techs had, with expressions ranging from incredulous to derisive.

He needs to try.

“Can you… can you check on them? Make sure they’re okay? Warn them?”

“The kids? The kids you were with before?”

Steve nods vigorously and Hopper’s whole face softens. His eyes shine with something that Steve has rarely seen - trust. Faith. 

Hopper believes him.

He pulls Steve close again and Eleven lets out a little 'humph' noise and snuggles closer into the embrace.

“Yeah, son. ‘Course I can.”

He spends his first full night as a double agent at Max’s house.

Her parents are away for the weekend and a neighbor is supposed to be checking in and keeping an eye on her, but it is one whom she can avoid without too much fuss. It's just as well - an empty house is far superior to a shed or a bomb shelter. 

She sneaks him in through the backdoor so nobody living next door sees a suspicious-looking stranger walk in. The rest of the kids also come over and stay for a long while, talking and eating popcorn and candy (he finds that he enjoys both very much - he's only had nutrition bars rationed out by the Techs since leaving the Lab) and making plans until it is late and way past time for them to go home.

He shows them some of his powers, and they are appropriately impressed as he lights various small objects on fire, shapes the flames and makes them dance. This fills him with pride, a reluctant kind of satisfaction and pleasure. He tells himself these feelings are unimportant.

When they leave, he falls asleep on the couch. It is lumpy and smells of many things he can’t quite name but in spite of everything he sleeps like the dead. He has been going non-stop since Seven vanished, and now, on this worn couch, he sleeps and he doesn't dream at all.

He wakes up to Max nudging him, telling him she's running over to the neighbor's house to check in, and that when she returns she'll bring back food. It speaks to his exhaustion and how strangely comfortably he is in this house, and with this small girl with the flaming red hair, that he lets her go with only a small niggle of worry, turning over on the sofa before drifting easily back to sleep.

When he wakes up for real she's still gone. He wanders through the house, finds a bathroom where he performs some much-needed ablutions, and then pokes around where he can. He finds bedrooms, closets, nothing too damning at a cursory glance.

Eventually he works his way back to the living room.

Six – Billy, he’ll play at being Billy for now, since it’s easier and he’s wearing the right clothes for it and the children seem to like the name – picks up the TV remote and studies it for a brief moment before turning the machine on and sitting down in front of the screen. He knows how TVs work in theory (he’s seen Brenner use something similar in the Lab, and he’s watched Techs watch daytime television while waiting with him in dirty motel rooms on missions).

He clicks the button.

The screen goes from white noise to a commercial for some sort of drink that makes Billy thirsty.

Then it's a commercial for a giant shopping center, colorful and crowded.

Then it's a soap opera.

Billy watches as a man in a well-tailored suit paces around an ornate room filled with shiny-looking furniture. He turns, reaches out, embraces a woman with a tangled mess of curly blonde hair piled high on her head.

“Sweetheart,” the man says to the woman.

“Sweetheart.” Billy echoes the word, trying it out.

“Yes, my darling, yes,” the woman replies, clinging to the man in the suit with her perfectly manicured hands.

Billy likes how she says ‘yes’, all gentle and breathy. Soft, as if a word could feel like pillows and blankets and warm, yielding flesh. 

“My darling,” he repeats, fiddling with the remote in his hands, something strange bubbling up in his gut. “Mine. _My_ darling.”

The two people on the screen kiss passionately. The woman gasps and then breaks away, her eyes closed. She staggers over to the shiny couch and grabs the armrest to steady herself, overcome.

The violin music in the background grows louder.

“We can’t!” she exclaims, clutching at her chest.

“Why not?” Billy asks the TV.

“Please, angel…” the man reaches out to her again.

“Humph,” Billy sticks his tongue out at the screen and changes the channel. “Angel.”

The next channel is another story, another show, and Billy pauses, curious.

The two people on the screen are certainly not in love, that much is clear.

It is two women. As Billy watches, one of them smacks the other across the face. The boy flinches in sympathy, feels the phantom pain of a remembered blow.

“Whore!” the woman shrieks.

Billy has heard that word before. The Techs have used it. One in particular used it on him, his voice choked with stolen pleasure and his grip tight on Six’s hair as he stuffed himself into the boy’s unwilling mouth.

And Agent McCormick said it once and Six asked what it meant, and the answer was confusing but also, in some ways, brutally, inescapable clear.

It was something he did not want to be. He wanted to be Seven’s, to belong to Seven only and not…not to others. He didn't want any others for... for that. But he couldn’t always help it. Sometimes things happened, and people with more power than him forced him to do things. He never meant to betray his lover, hadn’t wanted to… 

Hadn't wanted...

When it all came out Seven had understood, was outraged on his behalf, angry and defiant and sorrowful. Of course he was, he's Seven, always gentle and loving and perfect, always empathetic, always understanding, always forgiving.

But still…

The stain remains.

Billy changes the channel again.

This show is set on a beach. Billy understands when he sees the screen that it is meant to be a beach, even though he has never been to a beach before… he’s seen pictures, and that’s a beach, with the long stretch of something that could only be sand, and the birds, and the people… and that water next to it, churning and crashing and blue, could only be an ocean.

His eyes widen and, before he knows it, he is on his knees in front of the TV, pressing his hands against the screen.

It’s beautiful.

He is filled with the most overwhelming sense of yearning. He wants to melt into the screen and come out the other side. He wants to touch sand, touch water... feel the textures, temperatures. He wants to go there, to that place, and be enveloped by it.

A man strides out onto the beach.

He is the hero of this story, whatever the story is... Billy doesn't know, he came in too late, but he sees and he knows immediately that whatever else might be happening, this man is a hero.

Billy understands the concept of heroes. It's an abstract idea, but he knows enough. He's listened to Brenner's stories, the ones that had such an impact on the imaginative Seven.

He does not know if he is himself a hero. The data is inconclusive. The way Brenner talks you'd sometimes think Six was the only being on earth who could save it from destruction. Other times, when he describes the hardships and cruelties of the world outside the Lab, you'd be hard pressed to believe that virtue and courage and heroism were anything but made-up fantasy words. And, of course, the Techs have their own particular vocabulary for the Numbers - hero is not a frequently used term.

Sometimes...

Sometimes Seven looks at Six with awe and affection, like Six is the whole wide world wrapped up in one person, like he could do anything, be anything.

Sometimes Seven looked at him with eyes glazed with pain... pain caused by feelings of betrayal. Six's betrayal. Saving Seven by hurting him.

Based on the limited information he has, what he has been told, what he has come to understand, Six is either a hero or a monster.

Certainly one or the other of those.

The man on the TV is wearing a leather jacket, and he has long hair that sweeps almost down to his shoulders. He is tall and broad and confident. He looks out at the world and he is utterly unafraid of it. He is one with it, a part of it. On the inside rather than the outside.

Six... Billy watches as the man scoops a woman up in his arms. She has plump, red lips and thick brown hair that feathers out away from her face and catches the sunlight. She smiles widely, her teeth perfect and white.

“Baby,” the man says.

The two of them walk down the sand that looks so warm, down next to the water that looks so blue… and all of it moving and alive.

“Baby,” Billy whispers.

He is so entranced by the TV, by the beach and the ocean and the man and the woman, that he doesn’t hear Max let herself into the house and come up behind where he is still kneeling.

“That’s California,” she says, looking back and forth between him and the show he is hypnotized by. “I recognize it... I used to live there.”

Billy snatches his hands away from the screen as soon as he hears her, cradles them to his chest and shyly ducks his head. It really is disturbing how easily she sneaks up on him, and he feels as though he has somehow been caught out.

“You did?” he asks, finally, when it becomes clear that she is not going to punish or question him further, or make him feel ashamed of sitting on the floor and looking at the screen with all the quiet desperation of an animal begging for scraps.

“Yeah," she nods, sitting down on the floor next to him. "Lived there my whole life... before my mom married my stepdad. It was like that, with the beach and the sun. I used to go swimming and skateboarding down by the pier.”

“Stepdad?” That’s a new word. Billy knows 'mom' and 'dad' but not 'step-anything'.

“Yeah. Neil. He’s a dick. Stepdad means he’s not my mom's first husband, my biological dad. My real dad is still in California. He and mom got divorced and then she and Neil got married after.”

“Divorced?”

“Yeah. Means they aren’t married anymore.”

That’s a shocking revelation for Billy. He thought 'married' meant married forever. He and Seven are husbands in his head... and that's forever. He's clung to that idea ever since the first time he heard the word. He shudders at the thought of something so powerful that it could separate married people just like that.

He decides right then and there that he will not tell Seven about the concept of 'divorce', just in case.

“…And then because they were still fighting over custody and everything, mom and Neil decided it would be better for everyone if we moved out here to the sticks instead. So, now I'm here and I don’t get to see him anymore.”

“No…?” Billy pauses, searching for the words he wants. “No brothers or sisters?”

“No. Neil had a kid from his first marriage, but he died as a baby, apparently. Actually, it's kind of really super sad. He doesn't really talk about it. And then afterwards his first wife went crazy, so…”

Billy considers this. He lacks the appropriate context for most of the things Max just told him, but it still strikes him as a somewhat tragic story. He himself has known Numbers who died or disappeared, and he has long suspected that either he or Seven - or perhaps the two of them together, trapped in their tangled up, deeply codependent relationship - qualify as ‘crazy’.

He doesn't know what he'd do if Seven died.

Maybe he really would lose himself, then.

Sometimes he wonders if they aren’t both dead already, and moving through their days as ghosts out of sheer habit and force of will.

“It’s okay,” Max says, and Billy looks up at her, startled.

She’s watching his face and seems to see something there that he doesn’t particularly want her to. Sadness, perhaps, or something else. A kind of forbidden knowledge. It's a weakness, these feelings, and he should know letter than to advertise them. If Papa taught him nothing else, he taught him that.

He turns away.

“Hungry,” he says, deliberately draining all the emotion out of his voice.

“Oh, right. Okay. Um…I brought donuts, so...”

Billy winds up eating most of the donuts, loving the delightful sweetness of artificial sugar, and when he is done he then turns his attention to the kitchen and consumes all the remaining food in the cupboards. There isn’t terribly much... he finishes off a box of cereal, a box of frozen chicken nuggets, and a bag of lettuce. The noticeable lack of food in the house annoys him for a few reasons, only one of which is related to the fact that he is still hungry.

With nothing else to eat, he stands in the kitchen and paces restlessly. At the table next to him, the little girl starts going through take-out menus, her face twisted in a slight frown as she looks for alternative food sources.

“Why aren’t they here?” he asks after a moment, pausing his movements.

“Who?" Max looks up, confused. "Mike and Dustin and the others? They had to go home; they’ll be here soon.”

“No…” Billy shakes his head. “Mom. Neil. Why aren’t they here?”

“Oh. Um. Well, Neil has these friends who have a cabin an hour away in the mountains. They go out and stay there some weekends. With his friends.”

“They left you?”

The concept is very confusing to Billy. He thought children were supposed to be some sort of precious commodity, to be watched constantly and never left to fend for themselves. That is certainly how Numbers are treated in the Lab, and they're not even real people meant to be loved and cherished. They are only useful... and they are never left unsupervised.

“It’s adult friends. They like drinking and fishing or whatever. There aren’t any other kids out there for me to hang out with, and Mom and Neil can’t have as much fun when I’m there.” Max recites the words with practiced indifference and shrugs. “It’s okay. The neighbor makes sure I don’t burn the house down, and they leave me money for food and stuff. Only... I have to make the money last all weekend, and I didn't think I'd need to buy too much more stuff. I don’t know if I have enough left for pizza...”

The girl frowns down at the menu, and Billy feels a sharp, unexpected rush of guilt. There is nothing accusatory in her voice - she only seems apologetic and worried that she can't provide for him - but he feels the heavy weight of responsibility on his shoulders anyway. 

He ate all the food without realizing, and now there’s none left for him or for her. They'll be hungry. Max will be hungry because of him.

And it is perhaps because the girl does not blame him, and because she is clearly more worried about feeding and caring for him than herself, that this realization hits him in a part of his soul he wasn't aware existed outside of the strange tenderness Seven inspires in him. He feels something that he thought was unique to that singular relationship he shares with his missing husband.

She looks so peculiar sitting there at the table, a child with all the responsibilities of an adult, here alone with... with him.

Trusting. Trying. Small. Vulnerable. Clever. Kind. 

_Mine?_

As Max studies the paper in front of her, Billy quickly and quietly slips out of the room. In the relative privacy of the adjacent, empty hallway, he pulls the wallet Brenner gave him out of his back pocket and opens the billfold.

There are three crisp green bills with the number ten stamped on them. This is money - ten plus ten plus ten equals thirty, and if you need to purchase anything required while on a mission you may use these paper slips for anything under this amount. He glares at the bills for a moment before removing them and hiding the wallet away again.

He is, of course, well aware that he isn’t supposed to be doing this.

The most important caveat of being given a wallet with an ID and money inside is that such powerful items must be used responsibly. You cannot use them to run away, or to satisfy frivolous personal desires. The money is for emergencies only – Brenner was very clear about this. 

Very, very clear.

He takes a deep breath, steps back into the kitchen, and places the bills in front of Max.

“Good?” he asks. The word comes out a bit more tentatively than expected, and Billy is suddenly deeply concerned with how much he wants the girl to accept the gift and be happy with the money and with him.

“Holy shit!” Max’s eyes go wide. “Where did you get all this?!”

“It came with the clothes.” It’s not technically a lie. “It’s good? It can buy food?”

Max lets out a happy snort. “It can buy loads more than that! In fact…”

There’s a knock on the door signaling the arrival of the rest of the Party.

“…In fact,” Max grins, an expression that promises nothing but trouble, “I’ve got a great idea.”

He does what he can. He tells Hopper who the kids are - he doesn't know all their last names, but he knows Mike Wheeler and Dustin Henderson and Will and Lucas and Max and from his description of them Hopper is able to piece together who they are and where they can be found.

Hopper's face blanches when he realizes Will's last name.

The old cop says he'll go today and check on them. He says if they were hurt or of something happened he'd be the first to know - he's the chief of police, after all - and even if nothing has happened, he'll still check.

He doesn't say it, can't know how much it means to Steve - but he believes him. Steve can see it. It's everything.

Hopper leaves.

There's nothing more Steve can do. 

He is on edge. It occurs to Eleven as she watches him fret and pace that he probably would be on edge no matter what, given that he has now been isolated for several days in the cabin with no one but herself and Hopper for company.

She remembers what it was like when she first got out, those weeks in the cabin after the initial terror faded... the feeling that she had just traded one prison for another.

In the Lab there was a revolving door of new faces, of Techs, of changing experiments and expectations. In the cabin, one day is very much like another.

The tension grew and grew inside of her. Hopper, still struggling to find his footing as a parent, had not been as patient as he should have been. There had been fights, bouts of crying and screaming. 

She understands Steve's restlessness. She knows it is exacerbated by his separation from Six, the person who would usually, at times like these, comfort and ground him.

Even worse, Steve is plagued by memories of his nightmares. El doesn’t know what the dreams are like, but she knows how strange and disorienting her own wanderings in the in-between can be, and she understands the particular, terrifying immediacy of those moments in the void.

And, in a sense, it’s worse for Steve. At least when Eleven sees things she knows they are taking place in the present moment. Steve has no idea when his vision of Six and the children actually occurred.

They might already be too late.

"It'll be okay," she says gently, looking up at him with earnest eyes. "Hopper will find them."

"Yeah, but he's not... he doesn't have..." Steve shakes his head. "Six is strong. Powerful."

He hasn't told her much about their dangerous sibling, but the things he has said are telling. There is a lot to be gleaned from the blank spaces and unspoken pieces of his narrative.

She watches as he rubs at the burn scar on his wrist absently, almost as if he might erase it - or perhaps reopen it - with enough effort.

"Would he hurt them?" she asks. It's the most important question. 

One of them. The other questions she won't ask, because they both already know the answers to those.

_Did he hurt you?_

_Would you run back to his waiting arms if he spread them wide for you?_

Steve pales, wraps his arms around himself. Outside the cabin the birds twitter and the leaves rustle gently in the breeze, but inside the air is crackling with the boy's rampant anxiety.

"He... he might," he admits after a moment. "He would if he thought he could get to me by doing it. And sometimes he... he can't control his fire. If he's angry, he can't always control it, and it comes out without him directing it. Anyone who gets in the way..." Steve lets out a self-deprecating hum. "We're the same, I guess. Can't control it."

"It wasn't your fault," El says firmly. 

It's something they've gone over and over these past few days. Steve won't tell her everything about what happened that last day, the day the Bathtub exploded, but she knows enough to know that it wasn't Steve's fault.

She's been in the same place, done similar things. She knows.

She repeats the words to herself in the dark of night, the same words she says to him now.

"It wasn't your fault."

"I tore it open, El," the boy sighs, bouncing back and forth on his heels. "The wall. I didn't mean to, but the moment the Bathtub opened and I could see again, I saw a crack in the wall. It was glowing. I saw the monster. It wanted to come out and I... I opened the door. At the Lab, and who knows where else... and..."

Steve sighs heavily and drops down on the couch next to Eleven.

"And I still can't find him," he continues. "I can dream things and maybe they happen and maybe they don't... but the dreams don't _help_ us. I don't..." He trails off and bows his head. "Papa was right. There's no point. No point to me. I'm... I can't..."

"Papa is a bad man," Eleven interrupts. "He's wrong. You _know_ he's wrong." 

“Can you find him?” Steve asks, finally, ignoring her assertion. “With your powers, could you find Six and tell me what he is doing?”

Eleven considers it and then shakes her head.

“I’d need a picture. Something…”

“I don’t have a picture.” Steve feels the panic start to rise again. “I don’t have any pictures. What if they’re hurt or dead? What if he’s found them already?”

Eleven feels Steve’s fear leaking into her own consciousness. She takes a deep breath and grabs his hand.

He lets her lead him outside. It is crisp and cool and the morning sunlight streams through the trees and makes patterns of light and shadow on the ground. Eleven walks Steve around the outside of the cabin a few times until he calms down, just a repetitive loop that does manage to center the boy somewhat.

They are careful to avoid Hopper's traps and tripwires as they go.

“I have an idea,” she says after Steve's breathing has slowed and his focus has returned. She picks up a leaf from the ground and hands it to him, pleased that he takes it and runs his fingers over the surface, soothing himself by exploring the new texture with his long fingers. “What if you tried to find him?”

Steve comes to a sudden stop, staring down at her in surprise. 

“I can’t… how?” he asks.

“You said you can follow threads, right? That people’s emotions and thoughts all link together like… like a spider’s web? You followed Hopper to Joyce even though she wasn't there. You knew what she thought even though you couldn't see her... because she's in Hopper's head.”

Steve nods.

“You could follow those to Six, couldn’t you? And then... even if you couldn't see where he was, you'd at least know what he was thinking and feeling. You might be able to figure out where he is from that.”

Steve is about to say no, but then he pauses, considering the possibilities.

“I don’t know,” he admits, finally. “When I’ve followed them before, the threads, it always happens naturally. Like... Hopper was thinking about Joyce, and I could only see her thoughts through him. It's not something I control so much, and when I tried before I was never looking for someone specific. But…”

He… he could. Maybe.

He could try, anyway.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Just…" Steve looks around, eyes a dry spot safely tucked away in the shade of a large tree. He pulls Eleven over, sits down on the on the ground and tugs the girl down so she is sitting across from him.

"Sit here? I need to see you, and then I can see your thoughts. They'll take me to where I need to go."

Eleven nods, gives Steve a weak but encouraging smile. He pauses for a moment and then shakes his head.

"I won’t…," he stutters out, voice gentle, "I won’t poke around in you head. I won't go where you don't want me to be. Promise.”

Eleven's smile widens slightly and she nods reassuringly. She doesn't pretend it's not a concern because it is. Of course it is. The Techs did that, and Papa... flaying the Numbers alive so that no secret was ever a secret, so that no thought was ever fully hidden.

Still, she'd explained the concept of a promise to him, and he's promised her now that he won't violate her privacy.

And he's her friend. Her brother. Friends don't lie.

"I know, Steve," she says.

"Okay, just... I'll be careful. I will. Okay. Think about Hopper."

Eleven closes her eyes and does so.

Steve takes her hand in his, focuses on her face, and slips into Eleven’s mind.

It is difficult – as another Number, as someone with her own powers, El's thoughts are cloudy-fuzzy to him. Six was always the same way - all his fellow experiments were. He can see things, but it's fuzzy. It is like the unused channels on the radio Hopper and El showed him, the one they use to communicate with each other… the frequency is wrong. He has to work hard to work his way through the white noise.

Then, he sees it. Hopper. 

It’s a sharp blue color, and to Eleven it means safety and fondness and frustration. Steve grasps onto it, follows the emotions attached... there’s a mass of tangled threads from there, though...

“I can’t…” Steve murmurs, half to himself. “I don’t know which threads are which. He needs to be thinking about someone specific…”

The threads are muted. Steve pants slightly, and his head hurts from the effort of trying to stay grounded.

He can feel blood streak down his nose, cooling rapidly in the low temperatures of the forest, of the world outside of his head... but he can't be outside right now, he has to be inside... inside Hopper's head, he has to...

Suddenly, one of the threads in Hopper's tapestry of emotions lights up.

Steve follows it, chases it to…

“Flo?” he asks. “Flo is giving him an apple and telling him that he has a phone message from Mah... Murray Bauman? He's really ah... annoyed, he's...”

The bright yellow thread pulses and glows, and then fades away quickly.

“I can’t…”

“Steve!”

Steve pulls himself out of the twisted web in his head to find himself lurching forward against Eleven. He nearly knocks them both onto the ground but catches himself before that happens.

“I’m sorry…” he mutters, trying not to move to much. “I feel sick.”

He sounds like he very much means it, so for a moment the two of them simply sit there, clutching each other as they lie in the dirt. Steve pants heavily, trying to contain his nausea.

"We'll stop...," Eleven says gently after a minute or two. "You don't need to do this. Hopper will find..."

"No!" Steve interrupts.

He can't sit here and do nothing, not while the kids are potentially in grave danger. He can't go back to being shut up, trapped, with no way of know what is happening to the people he cares about.

Whether Hopper knows it or not, leaving Steve stuck in the cabin with nothing to do and no way too communicate with others is a sharp echo of what Brenner used to do when he was displeased with him. It may not be, in the strictest sense of the word, the dreaded punishment of solitary confinement, but the effect on Steve is the same.

He can't take it.

"No," he repeats, more calmly this time. "It's okay. I just... I need something that isn't so tangled. I can't follow it that deep without getting lost, I guess. I need to find someone closer to Six, someone who will be thinking about him."

"Who?"

Steve takes in a deep breath and blinks at her.

She reads the answer in his eyes. It's not a pleasant answer.

She makes a face. It would almost be funny, an amusing expression of distaste... but neither of them laugh because it is only a very mild response to the shared trauma they never really want to acknowledge.

"You want...?"

"Please. Please, Eleven."

That is enough to erase any shadow of humor or affection on Eleven's face. Her reaction is nothing less than Steve expects, and it's certainly nothing more than Brenner deserves.

"I'm sorry," he says, quietly. "Think about Papa."

She huffs and obeys. She doesn't close her eyes this time, though. She doesn't want to be alone in the dark with thoughts of the father they both share.

Steve walks into her head. He doesn't look around, doesn't try to see what memory Eleven was forced to dredge up to envision Papa. That would be a kind of violation, and anyway Steve cannot allow himself to be distracted by the pain the man inspires.

He stays there just long enough to find the thread to Brenner. It's like a steel wire, made unyielding by the tension and animosity between Eleven and the older man. He has no choice but to grab onto it...

_And he is immediately confronted by a mirror image of himself. He comes up short like he has been rammed head first into a brick wall. _

_His lifeline to the surface is gone and he finds himself in a strange, echoing void._

_It's a shock, to say the least, because it usually never works this way. He doesn't see faces, doesn't launch into new scenes and spaces, not unless the emotion is unusually intense or closely tied to a specific memory. _

_And this isn't just any face... it's him._

_They are all in some gray place. Steve and a version of himself standing just a few feet away, looking at him over Eleven's shoulder while Eleven remains calmly sitting on the ground._

_It's smirking at him, the vision, the double. It wears the familiar scrubs from the Lab, slouches and tilts its head, eyeing him with interest. It looks like him but also... not. The gaze is too sharp, too hungry. _

_As Steve watches, his doppelganger starts to glow. It whispers hideous, terrifying prophecies to him, power crackling at his hands like untamed electricity. _

_Brenner steps out of the shadows of this nowhere space, tall and imposing. It's all Steve can do not to flinch when he sees him. Papa is everything he remembers, all that authority and soul-destroying cruelty wrapped up in one man. In his hands he holds a much dreaded item - a small remote, the one that controls the ankle band._

_Six follows him, is three steps behind him, his own raw fire bound and pulsing under his skin. He looks wild, furious, his eyes glittering._

_The phantom Six and Seven both wear their ankle bands. Their terrible powers churn and rage, just waiting to be unleashed. The red light on the cold strip of metal wrapped around their legs blinks in its familiar, wretched rhythm. Brenner twirls the remote in his hands._

_Brenner - or this version of him, the version that Steve realizes is how Papa sees himself, imagines himself... his deepest desires painted in real life colors - places one hand on the other Steve's shoulder._

_A shudder runs through the boy, and while his smirk never falters, it does change. It stretches into something twisted and pained, and Steve watches in horror as his mirror image raises his hands and directs his terrible power at the oblivious Eleven._

"Steve!"

When Steve snaps back to reality, pulls himself out of this dream state, he is crying. He's wailing, actually, sobbing like his heart is going to break. Eleven is shaking him awake with both hands, eyes wide with fear, and the look on her face just makes him more upset.

"M' sorry... sorry..." Steve chokes the words out and then makes a weird noise between a sob and a squeak.

"What did you see?" Eleven tugs at his sweater, her voice sharp with worry. "Steve! What did you see? Was it Six?"

"Six... Papa..." Steve forces the words out. They're a strained whisper, horrible even in the bright sunlight. "Mm... me... saw me, but... wrong. Wrong. Wrong."

"It's okay..."

"It's not," Steve shakes his head. His hair falls across his face but he doesn't bother brushing it away.

He wants to hide. He wants to die.

"What did you see?"

How can he explain? How could he possibly explain?

He saw himself, and Six, and Brenner - he saw them as Papa wants them to be. Saw the driving force behind all his actions, the thing he covets above all else. And worse than just seeing... he was there. The sticky sludge of Brenner's ego and desire and hatred washed over him until he was drowning, drowning... coated in it, tainted by it.

Until that horrible truth, Brenner's truth, was all that remained.

Two monsters with unlimited power, and Papa holding the leash. The three of them destroying everything that stands in the way.

Papa's own dark dream.

"It's never done that... I've never... never..." he shakes his head, tries to justify himself to Eleven, to the trees, to a God he doesn't understand. "I ne... never see... f-f-faces. He wants... he wants... I wouldn't... I wouldn't..."

Eleven never finds out what Papa wants and what Steve wouldn't do. He doesn't manage to say, just keeps insisting and repeating himself. She soothes him as best she can. They stay sitting in the forest, sheltered by an old oak tree, and she holds him as he cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys... I'm the worst. I'm so sorry this took so long, my October and then my November just got completely out of hand - nothing bad, just super busy with work and family stuff. I also then committed the cardinal sin of thinking a section was nearly finished only to end up not being anywhere near done with it.  
You're all stars for hanging in there! I'm not sure when I'll be posting again but rest assured I've not forgotten or abandoned the fic, and I'm optimistic that it won't be another two months before I get a chance to update. In the meantime hugs all around, please feel free to say hi! <3


	5. (I can't get no) Satisfaction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Brief description of suicidal thoughts

**Then**

_The toy comes on a bad day. On one of the days when Seven is alone._

_For once it is Six, not Seven, who has been placed in something akin to solitary confinement at Papa's behest. _

_Unlike Seven, too, Six is not being confined as a punishment - at least, not officially. Brenner's experiments and punishments always have a way of overlapping until it is impossible to tell one from the other, and quite often they serve both dual purposes with admirable efficiency. _

_After all, aren't the Numbers always being punished for the crime of living?_

_Is not their very existence an affront?_

_This latest round of experimentation apparently requires isolation, sleep-deprivation, days and nights of tests and trials to be undertaken without support or companionship. _

_Seven doesn't really know the details. It's not like they tell him anything. They took Six away and they didn't say when he'd be back and Seven knows better than to ask. _

_He is still young, young enough for occasional visits to the Nursery for basic socialization, young enough to still have one or two baby teeth left, but old enough to know that he cannot rely on Papa or the Techs for anything. _

_He is old enough to know to give them nothing of himself, and to expect nothing in return._

_He gets some gossip when he visits the Nursery, but it's mostly incomplete. The little ones give him their whispered secrets - someone screaming down the hall from where they sleep, passing by a room and seeing a fellow Number strapped down to a gurney, overheard phrases dropped by careless Techs. _

_They've taken him to the Nursery twice in the last few days just to give him something to do, and when he went he tried to learn what he could about his friend. The powers that be haven't bothered with any kind of socialization for a while, though. Too much effort, perhaps. They've just left him here in this room alone for what feels like an interminable length of time._

_He's gotten his meals. He's gotten clean clothes. Same old routine. He doesn't know where Six is, and none of the Techs stick around long enough for him to try read their thoughts._

_The daytime isn't so bad._

_He's mostly just bored. There are no tests for him, no crayons, no Six. There's no one around, no little Numbers to play with, no strange rooms to visit. There are no distractions so it's a little bit like being in a more comfortable form of isolation. The big difference is that right now there is not even terror or pain to break up the monotony. _

_Still, it's not so awful._

_The nights are worse._

_Seven has shared this room with Six for a while now. He doesn't know exactly how long, but it's been long enough that he is now used to sleeping next to another living, breathing body, a warm person who likes to hug and cuddle, who wakes Seven up if he has a nightmare, who tries to make him laugh when he's sad and scared._

_Now the bed is cold and lonely, and when Seven wakes up to silence and darkness he is frightened by it. There is no one to hold him. It's just stupid, vulnerable Seven and the things he dreams up, and the last few nights in particular he has had nightmares... terrible nightmares._

_This place, this world is so frightening. All Seven's life, he's been afraid. He clings to Six like a drowning man clings to a life raft. Six is strong and smart and brave. If anyone can keep the monsters away, he can._

_But he's not here, and Seven is alone. Just him and the visions in his head. _

_It is daytime now. He is sprawled on the floor, his legs propped up on the bed so they are straight and parallel to the wall. He stares at the ceiling, wiggles his feet from where they are sticking up in the air, and tries to imagine something other than last night's dream._

_It was a bad one. A recurring nightmare. A monster with rows and rows of terrible teeth racing through a fog-drenched graveyard of twisted and rusted heaps of metal. _

_It makes him feel so cold, that dream._

_He can feel the yawning threat, the dull gray cloud of his own deep, profound misery threatening to swallow him. Six isn't here to help him, so he must do this on his own._

_He tries to replace the monster dream with another image, another memory of something seen in sleep and only half-understood._

_There is a girl in a room - he doesn't know the girl. He knows she is lovely. He knows this instinctively, even though he lacks the vocabulary to explain it and even though he is too young to know what to do with his feelings. He is drawn to her without knowing why. _

_She is pale and thin and has wavy brown hair. She is sitting with her mother and father on an overstuffed couch. There's a soft sound, a cooing cry from somewhere Seven can't see, and the girl's mother, who is working some piece of cloth and thread with her long, deft fingers, says - "Can you grab Holly, Ted?"_

_That's it. That's everything. Such a silly, meaningless dream, yet it has stayed with him._

_He tries to use it to erase the teeth and fear. It helps a little, but it's hard work, trying to ignore flashes of pain and horror and focus your whole mind on something strange and peaceful and gentle. The good never fully blocks out the bad. At best it only covers it somewhat, like see-through gauze. _

_And it's only a temporary solution. He can't summon the memories of dreams he likes when he's asleep. At night, he's at the mercy of whatever happens to invade his mind._

_He is so tired._

_He misses Six._

_Tears of frustration and exhaustion and self-pity are threatening to fall when the door to the room opens. There is no knock, of course, but the clicks of the locking mechanism alert Seven to the presence of an intruder in advance. _

_He is instantly concerned - it's an unexpected interruption, and those rarely bring nice things in their wake. _

_Seven twists around on the floor to see who has entered. It is not a Tech bringing Six back. It is not the Tech that brings him food, or the one that brings him clothes. _

_It is the one who usually walks him to the Nursery. _

_Williams._

_He's a bit younger than some of the others, and he has mousy brown hair and dull gray eyes. He's not an immediate threat, and there is no reason to be as on guard with him - at least not more than usual. _

_Williams doesn't hit or hurt unnecessarily, or say mean things that Seven doesn't understand. He does what he does with a quiet efficiency that would be comforting if his actions were not so closely tied to Seven's continued unhappiness._

_Still, Seven rolls over and sits up properly, assuming a less vulnerable position. He can't do anything to stop whatever the Tech is going to do to him, but he can at least face it head-on._

_The Tech steps into the room. The door is left ajar behind him, but no one else comes in and Seven doesn't try to get out. _

_Where would he go, anyway? These are still the early days. He has not yet come around to the concept of escape._

_Williams is holding something behind his back with one hand. Seven watches warily, sure it is going to be something unpleasant, but when the Tech is close enough he only crouches down in front of him, maintaining a non-threatening stance. _

_This is something new. The Techs are usually all too happy to stand above the Numbers._

_Williams pulls the object he is holding out from behind him and shows Seven. _

_It is a toy. It looks fluffy, soft, light brown in color. It has legs and arms and a round belly, and a face with a pink nose and shiny black eyes staring back. It is familiar enough, even though Seven does not know what to call it. _

_He looks up at the Tech, confused._

_"For you," Williams says. "And Six. A comfort object. You remember, from the Nursery."_

_"We're not allowed to take anything from the Nursery," Seven replies. His fingers are itching to take the toy, to wrap himself around it and use its softness and warmth to help him sleep. It is a poor substitute for Six, but at this point Seven is so tired and upset he is willing to snatch up any source of comfort and damn the consequences._

_He refrains at the last minute. He knows better. This might be another test, and if he fails pain will follow. He has learned that particular lesson well enough._

_He is not allowed to want things. He is not allowed to have things._

_The Tech shakes his head._

_"You can have this. Keep it here." _

_Williams pauses, and in the silence Seven gains the courage to raise his eyes and meet the man's gaze. The Number tries dipping his toes into the man's mind... he probes gently, trying to uncover any hidden intentions. He finds a relatively blank slate - placid calm, simplicity. _

_He is here, as he says, to give Seven this thing._

_That can't be right. That can't be all. Even with the nicer Techs there's always some ulterior motive._

_Seven's face scrunches up in a flash of frustration before he forces himself to settle down. This skill of his, if you could call it that, is still too new - a recent acquisition, and not one he understands fully. He hasn't even told Six about it, and he's not going to. Why bother? It's not working, anyway. It takes too much effort to extend his burgeoning powers further, so he pulls back again and tries to read the Tech's face instead, searching for any sign of deceit._

_Williams looks the way he always looks... maybe slightly anxious, like he's waiting for a reaction, but otherwise he is the same as usual. There's something in the eyes Seven can't decipher, but then again, there are often things Techs think and say and do that are utter mysteries to him._

_Williams waits until Seven is looking him in the eye and then speaks, slowly and carefully, as if he is trying to say something important._

_"You can keep it. For the nights. For the dreams. To help you."_

_Seven blinks in confusion, and then flushes._

_"Dreams," he echoes weakly._

_"You've been having bad ones," the Techs says._

_It's not a question, although it does spark new fears in Seven. He has had bad dreams, it's true, but he hasn't caused enough of a fuss, hasn't kicked and screamed enough to send the Techs and Papa rushing in to sedate him. That has happened before, much to everyone's horror, but he's kept it under control these last few days. So how does the Tech know he's slept poorly?_

_Seven's eyes flick up to the walls, to the lights. He looks back at the Tech and wonders where his other eyes are - the eyes he uses to spy on Seven when Seven thinks he's safe and alone and himself._

_And also... they're just dreams. In the past when he's had them he was told again and again - just dreams. Not real. Stupid Seven._

_Why would this Tech, or any of the Techs, or Papa himself... why would they care about 'just dreams'? _

_The boy feels slightly sick with the sudden knowledge of just how unbreakable the bars on his cage are._

_"Yes," he says finally. _

_Yes, he's struggling with the dreams. Yes, he wants the toy, the comfort object... he wants whatever scrap and crumb he can get. Yes, he knows that he is trapped. He gets it. _

_He understands._

_The Tech blinks at him. He looks a little confused, as though he expected more from the boy, but Seven doesn't know what else he could offer him._

_"Yes," Williams repeats. "Yes, well... you can have this. You can keep it here. Make it easier when Six is gone."_

_Seven accepts the stuffed bear - it's a teddy bear, he learns later what teddy bears are, and even later than that he learns that most children have many such objects in their possession, soft and cuddly things that belong to them and that they get to keep. He learns that most children are not begrudged such things, that they don't have to earn them through their suffering, that they don't need to always fear losing them._

_They are not locked in small rooms for days at a time and watched constantly and never allowed to see the sun and the sky._

_He reaches out and grabs the bear and wraps himself around it, draws his legs up and buries his face in soft faux-fur. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe, and eventually the Tech leaves without another word to him._

_Six comes back the next day, after Seven spends another sleepless night without him. Six is so exhausted and broken when he is dragged through the door and dumped unceremoniously on the ground that for a moment Seven thinks he might be dead. Seven nearly screams, nearly shrieks in anger and sorrow at the sight._

_He doesn't, though. _

_Instead, he pulls Six up onto the bed and sticks the stuffed bear against Six's chest. He wraps his arms around the other boy and holds him while Six cries and sleeps - sleeps for ages and ages, for a full rotation of a night and a day and another night. He wakes only to eat and share whispered snatches of information, dark tales of what happened to him during Papa's tests_ _, before falling asleep again._

_The toy came on a bad day. _

_It sat in Six and Seven's shared room for years afterwards. It became part of the furniture. Sometimes it took on a clinical, distant air, became a utilitarian tool like a gurney or a gun. _

_Sometimes it brought comfort when there was no other comfort to be had._

_It came when Seven was alone. Williams put it in his hands._

_As such, it is technically Seven's gift. Seven's possession. _

_It does not, of course, work out that way. Numbers don't own material objects, and even if they did... what belongs to Seven belongs to Six, and vice versa._

_That's just the way it is._

**Now**

Eleven does not say 'I told you so'. She doesn't have to. She just sits on the ground with Steve as he calms down, his weeping easing off and his breathing growing even again. It is very obvious that somewhere along the line a mistake has been made without her pointing out the obvious.

What she does say is - "You can't go into Papa's head again."

"I've done it before," Steve insists, his voice thready and cracked as he pulls himself together. His mouth twists with irritation. "All the time in the early days, before I realized how boring it usually is. It was never like that. I wasn't... drowning in it. This was so... so real..."

"What changed?"

Steve shakes his head. He doesn't know. It was like his very worst fears brought to life and he has no idea how that happened.

"Maybe he's asleep?" El offers. "Like a dream?"

The boy frowns. 

"I don't know... I've never seen dreams before. Not his, not anyone's. I only ever do this when people are awake... never slept with anyone besides Six, and I didn't like to... to poke around in his mind like that." He tilts his head and looks up at the treeline, the leaves rustling in the brisk breeze. "I guess it could be? It's daytime, though. Would he be sleeping now?"

Maybe not. Still, who knows what Brenner's sleep schedule is? The man is a vampire.

(For the record, this is an analogy Steve is now qualified to make. Steve has recently learned what vampires are, and almost without thinking he associates them with Brenner. A 1970s version of 'Dracula', replete with blood and screams, was on TV the other night and he watched it when he was supposed to be in bed but couldn't sleep. He scared himself badly and woke up Hopper, though in retrospect the images on the screen weren't much worse than some of the ones he's seen in person. He's known more frightening monsters. He's lived with them most of his life.)

"You can't do it again," Eleven repeats, and, yeah, that's the point. The whys and wherefores and all the rest is guesswork and conjecture, immaterial to their situation.

"Well, I know what he wants. Got that, at least."

Steve sighs wetly and drops back against the tree, letting it take his weight as he stretches out under it. Misery weighs on him like a stone. His face and the whole front of his sweater is covered in blood from his nose, sticky and hardening in the cool air.

"I guess I always knew," he admits quietly. "But..."

Yes. But.

He knew.

He knew. He tried to tell Six.

And what he saw in Brenner's mind is just a living image of what he already understood about the darkness in Papa's soul.

He saw himself. Those eyes filled with desperation. That twisted, pained smile. The power pulsing and deadly and pulling at the leash Brenner holds in his own tight grip. Seven and Six, ready to pour out hell on everyone and everything.

What Papa wants...

"He tried to make me kill a cat once," El says dully, wrapping her arms around her knees. "With my powers. Soda cans and then cats."

"He made Six do that. And he... he killed one in front of me. That was when I tried to... that was when I decided to go. To leave. After that, I knew."

"Yes."

"He wants to use it for that. Use us for that. To hurt. To kill."

It's not a question, exactly, especially after what Steve saw, but Eleven seems to treat it as such, pondering the possibilities. After a moment she fixes him with a considering look.

"I don't know," she says. "I'm not sure it's that easy. It's easy to hurt people - anyone can do that, not just us. You can kill with bullets. He has bullets. It's more than that. Must be."

She's right, of course. Steve sighs.

"He wants more than that. He wants to choose. To... to have and keep. Keep us. He likes the... the control."

And he leaks onto everything, his touch is everywhere, and there is no escaping Papa. Not really. Not inside, where it matters most.

Six was right about that, damn him. He knew instinctively, had told Seven in his own particular way that there was no way out, that physically escaping the Lab was only half the battle... the easy half.

Seven was deluded to think he could be Steve, to daydream that Six would maybe come and join him and Eleven and Hopper, that they would be able to reach the kids safely, that they could all be a family out here in the woods, that they would ever be able to scrape Brenner out of the inside of their skulls. 

You can't remove this kind of thing. It's like a heart or a lung or a brain. You can't separate yourself from it. Not without killing yourself too. 

Seven could die, maybe.

He'd be safe if he died. No one would find him or hurt him or use him as a weapon if he was dead.

Other people, too, would be safe.

St-Seven knows how people die. He may not know what happens to a person's soul afterwards, but he knows how death happens.

He could find some way to do it. There are sharp things in the house.

If he died, Brenner would stop looking for him. Eleven and Hopper would be safe in their secret home in the woods. In time the children would forget he ever existed. He'd be erased from memory - just a single digit dropped from a long sequence of numbers, without a family, without a true name, without leaving a mark on anything in this world.

Six...

Six would move on. Right? Brenner would find someone new for him. The man has resources, he could find someone else easily. He'd have no choice if he wanted to keep Six tamed - and isn't that Seven's sole purpose in life? Hadn't he been told again and again that he was nothing more than an object for Six to play with?

But toys can be replaced. Even special ones. Six is a survivor... and Papa is nothing if not practical.

So it would really make no difference, if Seven were to just...

"I've got an idea," Eleven interrupts Steve's train of thought. He looks up, startled, to see that she is suddenly determined about something. It is almost as if she is the mind-reader of the two of them and has decided to curb Steve's suicidal musings once and for all.

"What?" he asks, confused, as she reaches down with both hands and drags him off the cold ground, shoving him towards the cabin.

"Clean sweater. Shoes." She looks down at him with a fire in her eyes reminiscent of Six's determined smolder... only this one is sparkling electric.

"Clean up," she says. "And then we're going."

"Going?"

"Going."

Max's great idea is initially met with some skepticism by the rest of the Party.

"What if someone sees him?"

"What if someone notices?"

"What if he blows the place up?"

"We can't just..."

Max quiets them all with her flawless logic.

"If Six and Seven are really on the run, then wouldn't government agents expect them to hide out somewhere? Somewhere that's hidden, like a house or a bunker? And if the people at the Lab know about us, then staying away from our houses is the best thing we could do right now. What idiot is really going to be looking _there_ of all places, instead of at Mike's house, or Dustin's, or mine? Besides, he needs food, and other stuff, and don't you want him to have fun...?"

They're nervous. Of course they are. It's a huge risk. Besides, they only just found Six, only just reformed their bond to that fantasy world they've brushed up against in the past. He's their link to Seven, their link to adventure.

He's also vulnerable... scared and scary. They need to be careful.

But...

In the end, what's the worst that could happen?

It's only the mall.

Only the mall, but to Billy it quickly becomes an overwhelming experience. For one, it requires a journey on a bus. It is his first time on one. It is crammed with people who are just as fascinating as the view of the landscape rushing past his window. 

Even Billy, who has gone on missions and been out in the world before today, is shocked and alarmed by the number of people riding in this one stretched-out vehicle.

It's nothing compared to how awestruck he is when they reach Starcourt Mall.

The building is as wide as the Lab is tall, and is bright and loud and swarming with strangers. They rush past too quickly for Billy to properly evaluate their threat levels and identify them as friend or foe. Even the fire abandons him - he feels too small and stunned to summon up his usual weapons.

He is clutching Max’s hand without realizing it, staring at the hordes of people crowding around them, deep anxiety washing over him in waves.

“It’s okay.”

She's speaking to him. He looks down and she repeats herself, her smile wide, her eyes concerned.

"It's okay," she says.

"Yes," he snaps, immediately defensive. He doesn't like feeling afraid, and he can feel his skin heating up. He worries at first that it's the fire, but it's actually something much worse - self-consciousness. Embarrassment.

His fingers twitch in Max's grasp and he drags in a deep breath.

"It's okay," he echos.

"Where to first?" asks Will as they walk in, towing Billy behind them.

"Arcade?" Lucas suggests.

"Nah, let's eat first," says Dustin.

"I thought we were getting him clothes," says Mike. "That's the first floor. Unless it's shoes, that's..."

"Billy!"

Billy hums, distracted. He is studying the window of a store called 'Claire's', which advertises fashion jewelry and 'quick and easy' ear piercings. There is an advertisement in the window with the image of a girl with nail polish and large hoop earrings, and the boy tugs one of his earlobes with his free hand, thoughtful.

"Why are her nails like that?" he asks suddenly. He looks down at Max's hand and sees that her nails, too, have some sort of color on them - bright orange, chipped and bitten down, while the girl in the window has blue sparkles on longer nails. He likes it, and he likes the earrings, and he's suddenly very curious about how that works.

"It's nail polish," she explains. "You can paint your nails all sorts of colors."

"Forever?"

"No, they usually last a week or two and then you can wipe it off and get a new color."

"If you're a girl," Lucas interrupts. "Girls wear make-up and nail polish and earrings. Boys don't."

"Nuh uh!" Max snaps back. "Boys can if they want to! David Bowie wears make-up and nail polish, and he's the best!"

"My dad says only men who are queers and communist agitators wear make-up," Mike chimes in. He shrugs. "He's a dickhead, though, so... I wouldn't listen to anything he says about it."

"David Bowie is pretty cool," Will adds. He looks up at Billy, considering. "You can grow your hair out now, and try nail polish if you want."

Billy does want. He wants it very much.

Too much.

"I should..." the older boy shakes his head as if to clear it, and redirects the conversation as best he can. "Clothes?"

Clothes. Better. Safer.

Yes. He's thought about this. He's put it into the proper context, reconciled it as both 'Billy' and 'Six'. Clothes are allowed. Buying clothes is probably not the worst thing he could do as part of his mission. He could tell Papa such purchases were part of his cover. He is hiding. Under cover. He needs clothes.

Right?

His insecurities are quickly swept to the side as the kids, taking his suggestion and running with it, drag him into the nearest clothing store. He is immediately assaulted by more clothes than any one person could reasonably navigate, an overwhelming array of choices and options.

His mouth drops open and his heart sinks, but he is not given an opportunity to overthink it - Max pushes him into a dressing room, yanks the curtain closed, and tells him they'll be back in a moment with some things for him to try on.

Billy is left alone with his reflection. This is something of a new experience for him. There was a mirror in the bathroom at Max's house, but he had not lingered with it. There are few reflective surfaces in the Lab, so this is perhaps the first time the Number has had nothing else to do but make a study of himself.

It is also the first time he has the chance to consider, even though he knows rationally that it is ridiculous, making actual changes to his appearance. He sees now the face he presents to the world. 

He tugs at his mop of curls, usually kept on the short side in the Lab but grown out a bit now after much strategic wheedling on his part. He touches his earlobe again and tries to envision a piercing there. Not a hoop earring, maybe. Something else, something sharper, sleeker. More him... or the 'him' he would like to be.

He turns around and looks over his shoulder at his back. Then he turns again and looks at his front.

He bares his teeth. He tries smiling. It doesn't look very nice when he sees it. There is something false about it. 

That can't be right, surely... he can't look that dangerous every time he smiles. He knows some smiles are lies, but he didn't think his were. Not all of them, anyway, and not the ones he shows to people he likes.

What does he do with Seven and the kids? What face does he make when he's actually happy?

He tries softening his features. Just the thought of Seven is enough to smooth the smile out somewhat. 

Is this what they see when they look at him?

His musings are interrupted when Max thrusts a handful of shirts at him through the curtain.

"Try these!"

What follows can only be described as one of the more surreal moments in Billy's life. He obeys Max's command and starts working his way through the clothes offered. He tries on shirt after shirt, jackets and pants, and after he puts on each item he steps out from behind the curtain.

The kids are hilariously invested in his choices.

"I like it!" Dustin says about rather loud yellow shirt featuring someone named 'Weird Al'.

"How about this one," says Mike, holding up a black shirt with the sleeves cut off.

"Pants are too tight," Will chortles. 

“Try this one, Billy!”

“Oh my god, you can’t give him that!”

“Why not?”

Billy is already putting on the bright pink crop top Max handed him. He tugs it down a little and looks at himself in the mirror. He looks good, he supposes - the shirt is a nice color and not at all uncomfortable - but he’s also a little bit confused.

“Where’s the rest of it?” he asks, bemused, running his hand across his bare stomach.

The kids hear him and explode into giggles on the other side of the curtain.

After a solid length of time and much discussion, Billy finally grows tired of the process and makes his selection. He decides not to buy the crop top or anything else besides a simple red button-up shirt. He figures that it is perfectly fine to purchase this. He needs to be able to blend in, after all, and he can do that better if he has at least one clean shirt to change into.

(If the deep red color shocks him to his core when he sees it, if the fabric is smooth and soft and lovely against his skin, if the shirt shows off his eyes and muscles to an advantage... well, those are just happy coincidences. Breaking the unwritten rules.) 

Lucas and Max lead him through the process of paying for the shirt. Even though this is a thing he has practiced before on missions and in Lab simulations, he is grateful for the comfort of their bodies next to his as he glares down the cashier and hands over the money.

It is over quickly, and then he owns a shirt, bought and paid for with his own (_Papa's, _a voice in his head screams._ It's not yours, it's Papa's..._) money. He has a possession now. It's all his.

Mission success.

They aren't entirely home free, however.

They are on their way out of the store when he sees it.

It’s love at first sight.

The leather jacket rests wrapped around a store mannequin, and Billy slips away from the chattering group of children, finds himself drawn to the display as if by a magnetic pull.

He eyes the jacket, reaching out to brush his fingers against it. The leather is sleek and buttery soft, the deep black of it studded with shiny silver buttons and zippers and almost glowing under the bright florescent lights. It's just like the one belonging to the man on the beach in the TV show he'd been so enamored with.

He knows they don’t have the money for it. Even with his limited understanding of the cost of material things, he appreciates instinctively that something this wonderful must be out of his reach. He knows that, but still.

His palms itch a little, the fire... not burning, not flaring out, exactly... but rather flickering slightly underneath, warm and wanting.

It’s not even the jacket, perhaps… or at least it’s not just that. His heart warms at the _idea_ of the jacket, just like it did at the idea of the ocean, the beach.

In his mind’s eye he sees himself wearing the leather jacket and little else. In his vision he is strong and powerful and confident, and his strength is on display in the way his broad chest fills in the soft material. Shiny, sleek blackness against sweat-drenched skin.

Seven is there. The other boy looks at Billy and his jacket and finds him desirable, sees in him someone who can love and protect him from all the evils of the world - even from the Techs, even from Papa. The jacket makes Billy's finer qualities clear, marks him as someone special and worthy, untouchable. Seven's long hair catches the light, his bare skin warm and his smile wide with happiness as he presses himself into his lover's waiting arms.

Together, wrapped around each other, they walk down the beach, down the sand, next to the ocean...

Except, of course, none of those things actually...

No.

It's a dream. Not real.

Hurts. It hurts. The impossibility of that perfect vision hurts.

It makes him sad. And angry. 

And Billy could...

He could, perhaps, just take the jacket.

Sure. He could.

It's an interesting thought. He turns it over in his head, considering.

If you believe Brenner and all his big speeches, Six is a special, superhuman being. He's nothing at all like these insects scurrying around him with their petty morals and their insignificant ambitions (not that Six's true ambitions are particularly significant - he is just collecting all the small scraps of happiness he can - but Brenner's ambitions inevitably become his own in the perpetual reconstruction of his character). He's not defined by the same things that normal people are.

He could take the jacket.

He could stop anyone who tried to get in his way. That's the point of having power. Power means having whatever you want. Taking it, regardless of what other people feel or think.

Brenner takes. The Techs take. He could just…

“Oh wow!” Max says, standing at his elbow and looking up at the display. “It’s like the jacket from that movie…”

“The Terminator,” Will pipes up, also coming up next to Billy. The kid reaches out and touches the jacket, his fingers small next to Billy’s. “We can show you the poster, Billy, when we go past the movie theater. Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

"'Come with me if you want to live!'" Lucas says in his best imitation of the character.

"That's not even something the Terminator says!" Max laughs, punching him in the arm.

“The Terminator’s lame,” Mike says from where he is idly poking a stack of jeans, his voice picking up enthusiasm as he warms to his subject. “He’s just Wolverine but more machine-based. Someone like Magneto could take him out in a second.”

“Yeah, Billy,” Dustin adds, grinning. “There are better superheroes. We’ll get you some comics to look at. Lucas can give you his Uncanny X-Men #141...”

“Hey!” Lucas protests.

“It’s got Pyro in it. He’s like you! And Steven is like Professor X…”

“He is not like Professor X… he’s like…”

The bickering continues while Max snags the price tag on the jacket with her free hand. Her face scrunches when she sees the number, and she shakes her head.

“You could buy your own car for that. Sorry, Billy.”

The desire to take the jacket anyway flares up again, but somehow the idea is both less realistic and less appealing now that Max is standing next to him and the kids are chatting happily around him.

He knows that such an act would cause problems, in spite of Papa's words about supermen and power and the new world order. Those ideas are all nice dreams, he supposes, but they aren't here and now.

They don't matter so much - they are Brenner's dreams. Power for the sake of a grand plan. That's not his dream. He knows the difference. Sometimes he can tell the difference.

Billy... Six wants power. Of course he does. He needs it to protect himself and others, to get what he wants - _who_ he wants - in a place where he can be with them and look after them. Power is what he used to get Seven back last time. Power is what keeps them both safe.

It's nothing like what Papa wants.

And what was he always trying to tell Seven? The present moment is what matters. It is the only thing that does.

The here and the now - him and the little ones around him. It would make the kids unhappy if he took the jacket without paying for it, if he set fire to the clerk and stole what he wanted for himself. They would be upset with him. They would get into trouble... they might even get hurt.

That… matters. It matters more than Billy getting what he wants.

His new friends look up at him with eyes bright with excitement. With happiness.

With trust.

Max can see Billy get a strange, agitated look on his face as he processes what is going on. Her hand finds its way into Billy’s again and squeezes. He squeezes back and looks down at her.

“Pizza?” he asks hoarsely.

She smiles up at him and nods.

"Are you sure?" Steve asks for the twentieth time.

"Sure," El says. "We'll stay hidden. It's easy to do that in crowds. We'll be in and out before anyone sees us."

They'd hiked here through the woods. It had taken them over an hour, but it was an hour well spent in Steve's opinion. He is very nervous about this - he understands that this is a huge risk.

It is what Hopper would call 'stupid'.

But his doubts are quickly wiped away when he sees it.

The mall.

First off, it's huge. Coming up to the building puts Steve in mind of those moments he'd been dragged back to the Lab, the intimidating space looming up out of the landscape like a living monstrosity. He quickly realizes, however, that this place is nothing at all like the dreadful place he'd escaped.

Where the Lab was one anonymous, cramped, dimly-lit room room after another, the interior of the mall is a wide open space, brightly lit and spread out. There are shops and fountains and noise, all of it designed to make a visitor feel free even when indoors.

And the _people_! So many of them! So bright and colorful, laughing and chattering and content. Steve sees flashing sparkles of happiness over so many different faces as they connect with family and friends, as they share treats and treasures, as they seek out items that speak to them as individuals.

Even the ones that are less than happy are utterly fascinating.

"A baby!" Steve coos loudly, jolting forward as a mother pushing a very small child in a stroller passes them. He's never seen one in person before, and the sight is just as adorable as one might imagine. 

The motion almost topples the stack of boxes hiding him and Eleven from view, and she has to pull him back quickly to avoid calling attention to themselves. They've snuck in through a service entrance and are escaping unwanted attention by staying at the outer edges of the mall's interior. She is successful - the baby gurgles at them but its mother is oblivious.

Still bubbling with excitement, Steve remembers himself enough to calm down.

They have a very specific mission, after all. 

"Okay," Eleven reaches into her pocket and pulls out a green piece of paper. "Here's what you do."

Steve listens carefully to her instructions. She says she'll wait for him, watch his back and make sure nothing bad happens. But this is something he should do alone. A new experience, something he can hold on to when the walls start closing in.

A step forward.

Steve takes a deep breath, abandons the safety of their hiding place, and marches through the crowd of people towards the store in question. It is, as most of the stores are, brightly lit and colorful. It is also, fortunately, relatively empty of people and other distractions, and it smells deliciously sweet.

Reaching his destination, he stares up at the giant board covered in choices, choices, choices.

"Welcome to Scoops Ahoy," a slouching girl behind the counter says in a voice dripping with boredom. "What can I get you?"

Steve stalls instantly. It should upset him, but instead the feeling is strangely wonderful.

He is floundering not because he is being pinned down by Techs or judged by Brenner. He can make decisions now. He can do anything he wants because he is alive and he is free.

He walked all the way through a woods and he is surrounded by strangers and he is here in this bright and colorful place and he is free.

Choices! Ice cream! People!

Steve feels slightly dizzy, and he's grinning almost maniacally. He can't help himself. He's being swept away by a mad rush of something like sheer, unbridled glee. 

“Hey, moron!”

Steve blinks, startled by the girl behind the counter. On closer inspection she looks like she might be around his age or a little younger. She has dark blonde hair and Walkman headphones around her neck and a band-aid on her elbow. She makes a face at him and gestures at the list of flavors behind her.

“You gonna order something or what?”

Steve stalls again.

“Moron?” he asks, finally, after a long and agonizing moment. He’s not familiar with the term.

“Yeah,” the girl rolls her eyes at him. “Sorry, but you’re just standing there like an idiot. Make up your mind already.”

Oh. Okay. 'Idiot'. Steve knows what that is.

“There’s…” he tries. “There’s a lot of choices.”

The girl huffs. “No kidding.”

“Sorry.” Steve drags his gaze down to the tubs of ice cream in the display in front of him. He’s not even sure what he is apologizing for, but it is moments like these when all the sheer impossibilities of his situation are very apparent.

The joy is evaporating just as quickly as it came.

He should be able to do this. It’s what he wanted, after all. Choices.

That's the point of this whole exercise. He knows that. El brought him here to show him possibilities so he wouldn't want to... to do anything drastic. It's good, a good idea, and he gets the point she's making, but...

His fingers tug at his sleeve cuff, seeking comfort in the feeling of soft flannel. He tugs it over the burn scar on his wrist and huffs, annoyed at himself.

When Steve looks up again something in the girl’s face has softened.

“Do you have a favorite?” she asks.

“I haven’t tried them all.”

“Try this.” The girl grabs a small plastic spoon and scoops out a taster-size bit of something, hands it to Steve. The ice cream is bright pink with flakes of what Steve recognizes as chocolate.

The ice cream hits Steve’s tongue and he feels a burst of happiness.

“It’s good,” he says, grinning. “I like it a lot.”

“It’s Cherry Garcia. You want a cone?”

“A cone?”

The girl rolls her eyes so hard Steve fears for the stability of her neck.

“Oh my god…”

The girl behind the counter makes the decision for him in the end, but it is one he is quite pleased with. She hands him a cone full of Cherry Garcia and topped with whipped cream and sprinkles. The sprinkles are particularly fascinating for Steve with their rainbow of colors, and he can’t stop smiling as he eats them.

After a few delicious bites, he remembers the money in his pocket and hands the girl the bill El gave him.

“I’m Steve,” he says as he does so, still grinning.

“I didn’t ask,” the girl reminds him, handing him his change.

She probably doesn’t want to be his friend, then. It’s fine. It doesn’t dampen his mood too much. He has ice cream, after all.

He's completed his mission, achieved his goal. He understands a little bit, now, why Six always felt so satisfied when he completed Papa's tasks.

“Thank you,” he says, ignoring his new not-friend's rudeness, and turns to go and find El.

“Robin.”

Steve looks back. The girl is crawling up on the counter behind the register and putting her headphones back on, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

“I’m Robin,” she says, the slightest smile curling up one side of her mouth.

“Thank you, Robin,” Steve says.

“Whatever. Moron.”

There are only three rules. Hopper calls them the 'Don't Be Stupid' rules. They are few and short and to the point, so they should be easy to remember.

They are also easy to break. And once you break one rule it is very easy to break another. And another.

Eleven is breaking her own rule now... or at least, she is deviating from her set plan.

The stores are so tempting, though. El can see the food court from here, sees that Steve is doing fine in Scoops Ahoy. As she waits for him to return, she slips out of her hiding place and into a nearby store that says 'GAP' in big lettering on the front. It's a clothing store, and El eyes up the brightly colored offerings, fiddling with the frayed edges of her own oversized shirt while she does so.

She is examining a dress with a geometric pattern printed on it when a stranger's voice interrupts her thoughts.

"Pretty."

Startled, she turns quickly to face the speaker. He is a boy, pale and skinny, with a mop of dark hair, standing a few feet away from her. Uncertain, she decides to bluff her way out, a technique she has learned from Hopper.

She raises her eyebrow and the boy coughs nervously.

"The... the dress!" he stutters out. "It's, um... pretty. Real pretty!"

Eleven looks back at the dress. 

"Pretty," she repeats.

"Not..." The boy stumbles on and she turns to him again. "Not that you... aren't..."

"Aren't?"

"Aren't pretty?"

"I'm... not pretty?"

"No, you are! Pretty! And the dress! In the dress! Or in what you're wearing! Both! Pretty... you know... whatever."

Eleven bites back a grin and nods.

"I'm pretty."

"Yes," the boy sighs, relieved. "Yes. I'm Mike."

"Mike. Hi, Mike."

"Hi. Are you gonna buy it?"

Eleven blinks at him and then remembers the dress. As she does so she also remembers the rest of it - Steve and Hopper and the cabin and the fact that she shouldn't be out here talking to people. 

Even if those people are nice. And... pretty.

"Mike! Come on! We're getting pizza!"

That's a boy's voice. More people.

More people who, if they get a good look her or Steve, will be able to identify them if Brenner comes searching. Eleven glances over and sees that Steve has gotten his ice cream and is coming back to their now-abandoned hiding place. She needs to move.

"Yeah, I'm coming!" Mike yells back.

He is standing between Eleven and her escape route. She doesn't have time to think - she acts on instinct. With a flick of her head she sends a mannequin just behind Mike careening into a display stand, knocking it over.

Mike jumps and spins around, startled by the loud noise and the spontaneous destruction. 

"Hey!" yells the sales clerk. "What the hell, kid!"

"I didn't do anything!" Mike yells back, raising his hands in the air as if to showcase his innocence. "I didn't touch it!"

"Get out of here...!"

"Mike!"

"Wait, I..."

But when he turns around again, the strange, pretty girl is nowhere to be found.

Steve's joy lasts as he shares his ice cream with El, and then all the way back through the woods. It's cold outside - probably too cold for ice cream - but he enjoys the fresh air and the smell of trees. He doesn't think he'll ever tire of the woods and how it feels to be outside. He and El share and rehash all their experiences at the mall as they walk.

_I made a friend, _Steve thinks, happiness bubbling up inside of him. _And even if she's not a real friend she told me her name. Robin. Robin. Cherry Garcia. Moron. Sprinkles. Robin. I bought an ice cream cone with sprinkles from Robin at Scoops Ahoy at Starcourt Mall._

It takes longer to get home then it did to get to the mall - or at least it feels like longer. It's dark by the time they reach the cabin.

They find it easily in the falling twilight, however. The lights are on. Also, Hopper is standing on the front porch, looming ominously, radiating anger.

There is a fight when they get inside.

Steve watches in horror as Eleven storms past Hopper without speaking, as the older man throws himself after her, as the yelling starts.

He knows that he is at least partially responsible for their adventure today. They left the cabin because Eleven wanted him to not be sad anymore - ergo, it is his fault. It was a risk, a stupid risk, and they both knew it, and they did it anyway. And even though Eleven has been out of the Lab for longer and is more savvy about the world than Steve is, Steve is still the bigger one of the two of them.

Latent feelings of responsibility and guilt rise up as the voices do. Fighting is bad - it is always bad. He is so desperate to placate both parties that he very nearly throws himself between them, willing take all the blame if it makes the hurt stop.

His window to do so, however, closes before he can make that decision. 

Suddenly, Eleven is screaming about being trapped here in the cabin, about never being allowed to leave, and about Hopper breaking promises. She is yelling about Hopper failing her, and Steve, and all the Numbers, about him not making it safe for them to be free.

Hopper yells back. He insists that he is doing his best, that he is trying, that she is making it difficult. He calls her and Steve stupid, and Steve can't help but flinch violently from the sidelines as the familiar insult hits home.

It quickly becomes apparent to him that taking the blame will not help. It is clear that this argument Hopper and Eleven are having has been brewing for a long time, lurking under the surface of their life here. It is a monster that existed between them long before Steve arrived, and it is only rearing its ugly head now.

Hopper calls Eleven a brat.

Eleven says that Hopper is like Papa.

Steve wants to crawl into his closet and curl up under the covers of his little bed and drown out the sounds of the fighting. He is very nearly physically paralyzed. Mentally and emotionally he is collapsing under the weight of panic and terror.

For all the violence he has survived in his life, he has only rarely witnessed anything like this kind of full-pitched argument. In his experience, screaming like this always ends in torture and death.

He doesn't run away. He wants to, but he doesn't. He stays because he needs to protect Eleven and Hopper. He needs to protect them both, even if it is from each other. They are both in pain and he cannot leave them.

In the end Eleven is the one who leaves. She storms into her room and slams the door shut, knocking over a bookcase with her powers as she goes.

Hopper braces himself against the door, shouting one last invective over El's shriek of despair. 

When the older man turns back to where Steve is standing stock still in the corner of the living room, Steve flinches back. He can't help it - it's an instinctive reaction.

Hopper's facade of anger crumbles.

"Se... Steve... I..." 

The older man draws in a deep breath and shakes his head. The boy waits, expecting some sort of answer, something that will tell him what to do - something that will make all of this make sense. He wants Hopper to give him something that will fix this.

That doesn't happen.

"Go to your room," Hopper says finally. Steve can't help but feel a horrible wave of disappointment.

"Did you find the kids?" The words slip out without Steve's permission, the fears from earlier in the day coming to the forefront again. He must be stupid, not taking the escape route offered to him, but he needs to know. "Are they okay?"

Hopper's chest is still heaving and his voice is raw when he speaks.

"No, I didn't find them." He shakes his head. "Tomorrow, Steve."

"But..."

"They weren't at home today. Their parents said they're fine. I'll get them all together during school hours tomorrow."

"But, you didn't see them."

Steve is not built for conflict and confrontation, but when the moment arises he is more than willing to attack. He must be crazy, must be out of his mind to be challenging the big man this way, but suddenly he doesn't care that Hopper is so diminished, defenseless, broken by Eleven's words. He doesn't care that Eleven is crying in the other room.

"You didn't see them, Six could have them already, he could..."

"Steve," Hopper growls, patience at an end. "Go to your room. Go to bed. Now."

"You promised," Steve whispers. "Please, you promised."

"I know, kid."

"You said you believed me," he says, voice rising. "You promised."

"I do believe you. You have to trust me."

He does...he thought he did, but suddenly he isn't so sure anymore. Steve's eyes dart to Eleven's room. He thinks of the things she said. 

About them not being allowed to leave this place. About Hopper keeping them here... keeping them trapped. Like Papa. Not free to leave. Not allowed to be around other people.

Fear, then. Fear rises up and suddenly Steve wants to do exactly as he's told and slip away into his bedroom. He wants to hide from the threat in front of him.

He smells a trap, but the cage doors are already closed.

"Steve..."

The sound of his false name is what does it. His heart falls, his courage vanishes, and he darts out of the room to shut himself away in his little closet and try to get his breathing, harsh and ragged and coupled with unshed tears, back under control.

There is pizza and then there is the arcade. Billy and the kids successfully spend an entire day in the mall and put a serious dent in Billy's stolen funds. It is one of the best days the boy has ever had.

They are all playing games in the arcade when Billy sees him. He is standing just a little ways away, holding a fountain drink in a paper cup in one hand, his gaze flicking over the display in front of him, looking as casual as any other shopper. 

He and Billy make eye contact and then the man turns and walks away. There is no verbal exchange, but there doesn't need to be.

They've played this scenario out before.

Billy feels a thrill, dark and deadly, of burning rage. It is directed at this man in particular, as well as all that he represents. His fingers twitch but he curbs the impulse to use his power - curbs it for different reasons than before, when he was in the store.

He swallows it down. He does what he has been trained to do.

He can do nothing else, really. He can't be anything but what he is.

He doesn't want to go, but the look in the man's eyes is perfectly easy to read, and he knows that if he doesn't walk across that wide space and meet it everything will come crashing down.

Williams is standing in front of Kaufman Shoes, waiting for him. The kids are distracted by the lights and sounds of the games, and it is easy enough for Bi... for Six to slip away. He is subtle about it, using every trick he was taught as Brenner's little foot soldier, and soon enough he is standing next to the Tech, partially obscured from anyone's direct line of sight by an oversized plant.

There is a beat as Six awaits his instructions.

"I'm curious, Six," the agent says after a long stretch of silence. His voice is perfectly calm, almost amused, but Six isn't fooled at all.

"I wonder what you're thinking," Williams glances over at him. "I wonder how you think this is all going to work."

Six knows enough to be silent. That was not a question.

Despite the words and the tone he knows he is not being asked for an explanation.

"Seven is not here," Williams says, a statement of fact. "Where is he?"

"He's not with the children," Six replies, trying to keep his voice equally empty of feeling. "I've checked all known potential spots. He's not here. He'll come, though. He thinks they're his friends. He wants to be with them and he'll come. Soon."

The other man hums thoughtfully and takes a loud sip of his soda, slurping the liquid through a straw. 

"Brenner said that it was significant that Seven smashed up his ankle to get the tracker off," Williams muses. His eyes meet Six's and the boy sees a flash of vindictive glee, and also something else he can't quite identify. "You didn't know about that? Oh, well, those things are designed to withstand a lot of force... or did you think he'd just slipped it off? Who knows the damage he's done to himself. He might be down a leg by now. Or dead in a ditch somewhere."

Six does not flinch. He _doesn't._ His fingers twitch again, but he manages to reign the flicker of fire in just in time.

"Brenner seemed to think it was significant," Williams continues. "Thought the fact that he got rid of the tracker was a sign that Seven had evolved, that his logic and critical thinking skills had developed from his last escape attempt. I had my doubts, it's true, but the more I think about it... Seven perhaps isn't as stupid as we believed."

The man shrugs and tosses the remains of his drink into a nearby trashcan.

"At the very least, it proves that he is willing to damage himself, to make hard choices, in order to escape and stay free."

Six struggles to process the implications of this. His gaze flicks away before returning to the Tech's placid face. He tries not to give anything away but he cannot help but be disturbed by what he's hearing. 

"He won't come to the children, Six," the agent says, finally, with the air of someone explaining a basic concept to a small child. "He knows we know about his friends, and he won't risk putting them in danger. He's strangely moral like that, don't you think? Self-sacrificing. He learned that from living as your plaything. It's a weakness of his, but not one which, in this case, hurts him."

Seven isn't coming. And Six... Six had been distracted. For a moment there he had stopped looking.

There is danger here. Six can recognize it. It is his most basic, fundamental skill - recognizing danger. Only this new danger is insidious, abstract. He didn't see this one coming.

Seven isn't coming and he... he forgot to keep looking. He forgot the mission.

The agent shifts from where he is leaning and straightens his tie. He starts to walk away, leaving Six to his undercover gig, but as he goes his last words are clear and inescapable.

"Find Seven," he says, voice low, cold. "You won't like the consequences if we pull you out empty-handed."

It is late at night when Steve emerges from his room.

He knows Hopper is still awake. He can hear the TV. 

It's probably a bad idea to leave the safety of his room. He knows this, he's not stupid. He does it anyway. He comes out because he is trying to be brave.

The older man is staring glumly at the TV, his eyes unseeing as he takes in whatever is happening on the screen. Steve is moving nearly silently, but the man must hear him anyway, must sense his presence, because he speaks without looking up.

"I made a promise."

Steve startles at the sudden sound, but Hopper pays him no mind. He just keeps his eyes glued to the screen in front of him and speaks in a voice dripping with self-recrimination.

"I made a promise. A lot of promises. When Eleven first came. I found her in the woods, eating a...a squirrel, of all things. Young kid. So young. So young. Brave and terrified. And she told me who was to blame. It's not like she hid it. It's not like she didn't tell me."

The man sighs and shakes his head.

"I was going to find Brenner and kill him. I was going to expose the Lab and all the things they were doing there. If the newspapers or the government weren't interested, I was going to burn the place down myself. A one man army. Such a fool. I was so angry and I didn't think... I want you believe me, kid. I meant it when I made those promises. I still do."

Steve steps into the room and moves towards the man. He's still wary and afraid of more fighting, but he's also listening to what the old cop has to say.

"I might be a coward," Hopper says. "I never thought of myself as one, but I might be. But I... I have... I had a daughter."

The boy can't stifle a small gasp at this new information. The cop nods at the sound but still doesn't look up and meet his eyes.

"I had a daughter. Sarah. My little girl. Beautiful little girl. She died and then her mother left and... she... I can't lose El. I can't lose her. I can't... I can't lose you."

Hopper sighs again, deep and sad, and finally looks up at Steve.

"I never want you, either of you, to be hurt. At all. So I hid you both away. I've made a... a science of hiding, these last two years. Because... because keeping Eleven safe was more important. More important than stopping what was happening. All that evil, and I didn't stop it. Couldn't think past protecting the only thing I had. I didn't care about the others. I didn't care about you until I saw you in the woods. I left you in that place for years. You suffered for years. Others have suffered. Because I'm a coward."

Steve is not a mind-reader in the strictest sense of the word. In this moment, however, he feels something important click into place, some missing piece of the puzzle. He can see the older man's frailty and shame, can see what drives him. Simple, really.

In a way, Hopper is very like Papa. He wants to control the world around him, to impose order on chaos. He wants to be the puppeteer holding the strings because that way he can decide who stays safe and who gets hurt. 

But really, the old cop could not be less like Brenner if he tried.

Steve ponders this. He walks further into the room and sits down on the couch next to Hopper. 

He sits in silence for a moment, and then speaks... slow and careful, yet at the same time with total conviction, driven on by a profound need to explain.

"There were lots of them," he says. "Lots of Techs. Grown-ups. People bigger and older and smarter than me. Bigger than Papa. Bigger than you. They worked in the Lab all the time, every day, for years and years. So many that I don't know most of their names. There was one, Williams, who was almost nice. He never hit, and he never yelled. He gave me a toy once, even though it wasn't approved. He stopped the worst Techs from going too far. He was probably the best, the one that wasn't too scary."

Steve sucks in a deep breath. He is not ready to give Hopper or anyone else the full story just yet - he's not even sure he could say it out loud even if he wanted to - but he can still give him this.

"He also took me to isolation, to punishments. He'd help strap me down before the electroshock treatments. He put me in the Bathtub. When Papa told him to hurt me and Six, he did. I begged him to help me, to stop hurting me, but he wouldn't. He did what Brenner told him, always."

Hopper makes a soft, wounded noise, but the boy barely hears it.

"Six can set things on fire," Steve continues, nearly overwhelmed by his growing sadness, his eyes skirting away from the cop as he gives voice to his shame and pain. "Eleven can move things without touching them. I can blow things up with my mind if I get mad enough. I knew others... we all had powers. We all had things we could do to hurt. To kill. The Techs had prods and guns, but we had our own weapons, too.

"We only got the ankle bands after El ran. That's not long. That's two years ago... I remember when it happened. I already hated it there, already hated the Techs before we got the band. Why didn't we run before? Why didn't we kill Brenner? Six leaves on missions all the time - goes out into the world with a wallet and a name. He never ran... he never runs. He always comes back to the Lab, to me. We're all powerless... because we choose it."

Steve blinks and drags in a shaky breath, fixing his eyes on Eleven's bedroom door.

"It's not just you. It's not even Papa. It's just that sometimes having choices and not having choices feels like the same thing. They're both scary. They both mean you're powerless... just in different ways. I stayed in the cage. For a long time I ignored my powers and I stayed."

"You chose to run." 

"Not soon enough," Steve whispers, a harsh pang in his chest. "Not far enough." 

"Far enough, kid. You ran far enough."

Steve looks up at the older man, who lifts one of his big hands and rubs between the boy's shoulder blades comfortingly. He's crying and he didn't even realize it... Hopper reaches over and gently brushes a tear away.

"I'll go tomorrow, Steve," Hopper says. "I couldn't today but I swear, I believe you when you say the kids are in danger. I wouldn't have left it for later if I didn't think they'd be okay in the meantime. I just couldn't find them today, and I was worried that if I kicked up too much fuss it'd call attention to us. I'm sure Brenner's people are out there, watching. But I'll find the kids. I'll warn them."

"Promise?" Steve can't help but ask.

"I promise. I'll keep my promise, son."

Steve nods and, after a moment, smiles. He glances back over to El's bedroom door and the smile drops slightly. Hopper follows his line of sight and sighs heavily.

"She's not wrong to be upset," he says. "I told her when she came that I would make it safe for her, but... I get why she sees this place as a prison. I owe you both... a lot. This is on me. But, kid, you can't leave the cabin again without me. Okay? It's not safe. If Brenner or anyone saw you..."

"I know," Steve says. He does. He is still wary of any traps and cages, of anything that limits his newfound freedom, but he does understand. He ducks his head and throws Hopper a worried look.

"It's my fault we went," he admits quietly. "I was sad. El was worried about me. She wanted me to be less sad, so..."

Hopper studies the boy for a minute. "And did it help? The mall?"

Steve tilts his head and then nods, awe and anxiety leaking into his voice.

"So... so many choices, Hopper. So many people! I didn't think..." he shakes his head. The sharp edge of bitterness creeps into his mind and his tone. "I can see why Papa never wanted to let me out. I can see why Six never did. He always told me the world is awful and dangerous, but it isn't. So many choices. So much happiness. It's so... so beautiful. He knew, and he lied to me about it. He kept it from me."

"Six?"

Steve nods.

"The world can be scary, it's true. He wasn't exactly wrong there."

"I want to hate him," Steve confesses, revulsion rising in his chest even as he speaks the words. "Six. He didn't tell me. He kept the world from me. He wanted me scared."

There isn't much Hopper can say to that. The boy sighs, confusing feelings swirling inside of him, and the cop tugs him into a hug, unsure of what else to do.

"It's okay, Steve," he murmurs. "You're okay."

It's okay. It's okay because Hopper said so and Steve does... he does trust Hopper. He needs to trust someone and Hopper is good. He's rough and foolish and flawed, but he is good. He looks at Hopper for a long moment, enjoying the warmth of his hand on his back.

Then, he leans over quickly and kisses the corner of the older man’s mouth.

“Whoa!” Hopper jumps in his seat. “Kid…”

Steve lifts a hand to the older man’s face and leans in again, his intentions very clear.

“No.” Steve finds himself blocked. Hopper grabs the boy’s hand and holds him away, gentle but firm. “Steve, no.”

No.

No… no kissing?

“Why?” Steve doesn’t understand.

“Jesus, kid, we’re not… it’s not like that with us.”

Not like what? Steve likes Hopper. Hopper is kind, and he touches him gently, with affection, even in moments like this when Steve has clearly gotten something wrong.

The only other person to ever touch him like that was Six. The only other person who automatically forgave his many failings was Six. And Six isn't here, Six is on the opposite side of everything Steve wants, and Hopper...

“You’re a child, Steve, just a kid.” Hopper is talking now, explaining himself, but Steve, who is irked at being so slow on the uptake, doesn’t really understand how his words affect their situation.

“A vulnerable kid,” the older man continues doggedly, still holding him at arms length there on the couch. “You don’t understand, you can’t… I’m supposed to look out for you. Not… not do this. Not like this.”

Now Steve is really confused.

“Like Six,” Steve tries to clarify. “We did this. Kissing. Touching. It’s good. It feels good.”

Hopper lowers Steve’s hand to his lap, still holding it in one oversized fist, and rubs his shoulder soothingly with the other.

“Okay," he says, in a voice that very clearly telegraphs that it is not okay. "Right. But…”

“Like Six,” Seven - no, Steve, he’s Steve now, not Seven - insists. “Feels good. Happy.”

“Steve.” The older man sighs and looks up at the ceiling like he does when he’s trying to find answers. “Okay, Steve. Listen. Do you feel about me the way you did about Six?”

“I don’t want Six anymore,” Steve snaps crossly. “I choose.”

“It’s okay, kid. You’re not… just tell me. Is it the same with me? Do you feel about me the same way you felt about Six?”

That seems like an irrelevant question, but Steve gamely answers it.

“You look out for me. Feed me and help me. You keep me safe. You…” Steve lifts his hand and pats where Hopper’s big paw is resting on his shoulder. He doesn’t really have the words to explain it, but he tries anyway. “You touch me. It feels good.”

Hopper doesn’t respond except for spasmodically clenching his hand. To his credit, he doesn’t actually remove it from Steve’s shoulder in a misjudged attempt to reject him and put distance between them, but it’s clearly a near thing.

Steve sees it anyway.

A fresh wave of panic washes over the boy.

“Hopper. Please… don’t…”

He stumbles, unsure how to finish that sentence. Don’t what?

_Don’t stop. Don’t start. Don’t hurt me._

_Please don’t hurt me._

_Please don’t…_

“I’m not,” Hopper shakes his head, apparently understanding enough, if not quite everything Steve is trying to say. “Jesus, kid. I’m not. I won’t.”

He seems upset, angry, and the sight makes Steve nervous. He’s so big and displeased and that can’t be good...

Hopper must pick up on the boy’s growing distress because he makes a conscious effort to smooth out the lines in his brow and appear smaller. He hunches over a little and leans back, and somehow the sight of the big man trying so hard to make himself look less threatening is almost funny enough to ease Steve’s anxiety.

“It’s okay,” says Hopper. “It’s okay. Jesus Christ, I’m going to kill that man, Brenner. I’m going to…”

He shakes his head again as if to clear it, and sucks in a long breath.

“Look, Steve… There are lots of different kinds of touching and lots of different kinds of loving. What I think you feel for Six is different than what you feel for me.”

Steve shakes his head.

“It is,” Hopper insists. “There are lots of different ways to take care of someone, to give them what they need.”

“No.” That has not been Steve’s experience.

“There are lots of different kinds of love, son,” the cop says gently. “Think, okay? Think about how you feel about El. About me.”

Steve opens his mouth to argue and then stops… thinks.

Six is fire. Six’s touches are comfort and pleasure and fire. Seven always felt an irresistible pull, stronger than gravity. A burning inside, in his belly. 

Hopper is warm. Big and protective, and without that edge of danger that Six has. Without the all-consuming draw.

Like Brenner but not. In control but not.

Smart and warm and always trying…

Like with Eleven, there isn't the same kind of _need_. There is need, certainly... he loves them, he does... but it doesn't burn the same way.

Steve nods slowly.

Yes, maybe it is different. And he never needed to question it with Six, never really needed to ask. They always had anyway, always talked, always requested feedback and permission before they touched each other, but they never _needed_ to. Asking was just part of the game, the foreplay. No one else in that horrible place ever asked them anything about what they wanted or didn’t want.

Nobody else cared.

To give and take and touch and talk about it was what made them different. And the answer to the question had always been ‘yes’.

So maybe it is different, and doesn't that make it all the more confusing? Because Steve doesn't want to want Six. It's like how it is with Brenner. Steve wants to be free, and he is free, but not inside, not where it matters. He's still in Six's orbit.

He still can't make the choice.

This line of reasoning leads to another - Steve has a horrible thought suddenly that makes his heart drop in his chest.

He hadn’t asked.

He remembers some of the Techs, the ones with dark glints in their eyes, touching him in places he didn’t like. Touching him when he didn’t want to be touched. Touching him without asking, without caring.

He remembers Brenner’s hand landing hard on his cheek with a loud cracking sound and his head snapping back from the sheer violence of the blow.

He remembers grasping hands pushing him down.

He remembers Six’s teeth breaking skin.

And now…

Steve kissed Hopper when Hopper didn’t want to be kissed.

He’s no better than…

He almost falls off the couch in his hurry to do the only thing he can - to make himself small, to get on his knees, to go pliant and hope that this placates the person he has unintentionally harmed.

Hopper, fortunately, seems to see what Steve is going to do before he does it, and because he is already half-holding him in his grip he is able to prevent the worst of the fall. Steve’s knees barely hit the floor before he is scooped up into massive arms and pressed into Hopper’s warm chest in what Eleven would call a ‘big bear hug’.

“I got you, kid,” Hopper murmurs. “It’s okay, you’re okay…”

Steve chokes out a wounded, despairing noise because he is most certainly _not _okay - he is very confused and he misses Six and he has ruined his relationship with Hopper, he just knows he has - and more than that, he has turned into the one thing he never wanted to be.

A person who doesn’t ask. A Tech. No better than Brenner.

A bad man.

“Sorry,” he manages to whimper into Hopper’s shoulder. “’M’ sorry…”

“Don’t, kid. Don’t be sorry…”

“I’m bad… you didn’t want me to… I did it and I didn’t ask and I’m sorry…”

“I’m…” Hopper squeezes him close. “No, Steve. I'm sorry. You're not bad. You're brave and kind.”

"No," Steve whispers, sobbing. "I'm scared. Hopper, I'm scared..."

"I know. It's why you're brave. You and Eleven… you’re like that. Brave. Like Sarah was. Like men I've know... soldiers in a war you didn't ask to fight in. You’ve both been through hell, and you still... you still don't want to hurt me." Hopper huffs, a sound drenched in despair. "Don't deserve you. Neither one of you."

Steve isn't sure who the cop is talking about. Who doesn't deserve them? The world, or Brenner, or Six, or Hopper? He doesn't get clarification because Hopper stiffens and shakes his head before he can ask.

“It doesn't matter," the man says. "They aren't getting to you again, kid.” Steve lifts his gaze and locks eyes with the older man, sees the determination there. “I’m gonna make sure. They are never getting their claws into you again.”

He wants to be comforted, but he isn't. He isn't because Six and Brenner and the Techs are all in the room with them now. He sees them as clearly as he sees Hopper sitting next to him.

He knows the truth.

They are in his head, in his soul.

They never left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, retail therapy! The revenge of the pink crop top! BTW I've shamelessly stolen stuff from 'The Giver' and 'Wonder Woman' for this, but those things are awesome so no apologies.
> 
> Guys, you've been stars for hanging with me through my crazy schedule. I'm not sure when I can update again with the holidays/work taking up most of my time but I'm optimistic that it will not be long - regardless, I'm still plugging away at this and it will be completed, never fear!
> 
> You guys are amazing and deserve all the hugs - have a wonderful and safe holiday season <3


	6. I guess that's why they call it the blues

**Now**

Sometimes, Steve looks at himself. Steve is capable of self-reflection and circumspection in a way many people are not, mostly because he is able to clearly see the inter-connectivity that defines all relationships, both internal and external.

When he wants, he can apply this power to himself. He can step back and look at what he is on the inside, just as he can sometimes see what people around him are thinking, or watch events play out a few moments before they actually happen.

He used to do this with some frequency when he was a prisoner in Brenner's Lab. He'd had so much time to do it then. Now, in these brief but precious days of newfound freedom, he does it at odd moments in the cabin.

He looks to make sure that he is still there - still him. He sits on the spot on the couch he has claimed as his own, or in the shade of the big oak tree just next to the cabin's sagging front porch, concentrates on some mundane object in front of him, and contemplates.

When he undertook this strange navel-gazing in the past, he always saw himself as a small creature, solitary and silent, covered, weighted down with things. These things looked like tentacles or tree roots, almost - they were long and dark and oily, and they clung to him like vines, and he knew they kept him tethered and tied to the ground.

Such bonds and chains sometimes are a comfort. Almost everyone on earth has them in one way or another. They keep him anchored. They mean he is visible, connected... that he can't just disappear or float away.

At other times they feel stifling, claustrophobic... a terrible trap that drains him of everything he is. Claws that dig into soft flesh, lines of wire that strangle him.

Six is one of them. He always has been. A twisted and knotted vine wrapped around his heart.

He doesn’t blame Six for this. He loves Six. 

He knows Six can't help it.

Six tied him down. But sometimes, he was also the thing that set him free, made him happy.

Helped him fly.

Six always believed Seven was something more. When Brenner told Seven he was nothing, nothing, nothing, Six kept him and loved him and said he was something. Something special.

And on some level Seven believed, truly and completely, what Six whispered to him in the quiet darkness. If he hadn't, if he hadn't thought he could be more, he would never have found the courage to run away.

In so many ways, both intentional and unintentional, Six helped him become something more. Six trapped him and Six freed him.

Steve watches. He looks at Jane and at Hopper and thinks about the way things are.

Hopper is a lot like Papa. He knows things and manages things. It’s different, though. Brenner always needed to be in control of everything. There wasn’t a speck of dust, an action, a thought in that Lab that he didn’t know about and didn’t, on some level, manipulate to suit his own ends.

Brenner would never have pulled away from Steve's tentative kiss last night, never would have gentled Steve and comforted him and blamed himself for the misunderstanding.

No. He would have used Steve's mistake against him. He would have used it to break him.

Hopper controls nothing. Not really. He makes food and he sets traps outside and he comes in at the end of the day big and tired and grumpy, but that isn’t the same thing as control. Hopper knows nothing about most things, and usually he just muddles along the best he can.

The older man looks at Eleven with fond awe and defers to her with some regularity. He looks at Steve with something similar. 

He looks at the both of them like he doesn’t know what they’re going to do next. He was shocked when Steve reached out last night and touched him, when he pressed a kiss to his mouth. He was stunned that Steve and Eleven went to the mall without telling him.

These events shook the foundations of their peaceful existence.

Steve can feel the older man grasping at the vines, the tentacles, the chains. He wants to hold on to them, to keep them close, to keep himself tied to the ground. People are a kind of mystery to the old cop, in spite of all his worldly knowledge. They rarely seem to do what he expects.

Steve never feels the full potential of his own autonomy so profoundly as when he sees himself reflected in Hopper's eyes. 

Brenner never looked at Seven or any of the Numbers like that. He always seemed to know what they would do.

At least until that last day.

** Then **

_It is Six that starts it. In a way it is all Six’s fault. _

_Ironic, really. The one person in the whole world committed beyond reason, beyond sanity, beyond life itself to ensuring Seven's continued imprisonment in Hawkins Lab - and he is the one who tips the first domino, who lights the match, who brings the whole thing crashing down._

_When it happens, it happens quickly. It was only a few weeks ago. _

_Not long at all, really._

_There is a chain, an endless chain of cause and effect. _

_Seven can see it, sometimes. The chain. Most people can't, and they go through life trying to control the tides and seasons, trying to impose their will on all the wrong things. They don't see until much later, if they see it at all, how the sequence of human events is a complex tapestry of actions and reactions._

_Seven can see it. He is in the past, the future, the present. They blur. They are all the same thing, the single moment._

_He can’t stop it, but he can see it._

_The moment is perfect, in a way, precisely because of its maddeningly predictable unpredictability. _

_Six is not sensitive. He is not what Brenner would call, in his thin and derisive way, ‘a gentle boy’. That’s what Brenner calls Seven. Six is not that, at least not according to Brenner, or Six. _

_There are precious few things in the world the Number truly cares about, and it is usually very difficult to set him off._

_In this way, he is Brenner’s perfect Experiment._

_There are times, however, when the dam breaks, and when that happens there is no stopping Six, and no helping anyone caught in the crossfire._

_Seven is in one of the Testing Rooms and a Tech has given him paper and a pencil so he can draw. He is drawing a city with tall buildings, and a van full of people with strange hair bursting through a brick wall and coming out fine and whole the other side. It’s nothing important - just something in his head. One of his dreams, nothing the Techs or Brenner would care about. _

_The Techs resent Seven because he is uninteresting, and because when he is not locked up in his and Six’s room he is usually being subjected to myriad tests – which he almost always fails – or he is in a place like this doing nothing. Just drawing nonsensical things. _

_He is much too old for the Nursery now, so he needs to be given minor tasks like these to do so his brain doesn't turn into oatmeal. He has been compared unfavorably to a high-maintenance houseplant in terms of his usefulness._

_The Techs refer to their time with him as ‘babysitting’. Seven doesn’t understand the term at all but the way they say it makes it sound like something bad._

_He is calmly drawing when the alarm goes off and a lock-down sequence is initiated. Seven knows the procedure well and reacts automatically. He stands so he can be taken back to his room and the Tech gently but firmly places a hand on his shoulder to guide him. _

_They are almost at their destination when Seven hears it - a wild shriek. The Tech tries to move him along, but he comes to a screeching halt and nearly crashing into the other man because he knows that voice. He knows it so well._

_Six is dragged past them down an adjacent hallway. At least three Techs are on him, trying to contain him as he howls, hysterical and enraged. _

_Seven only catches a glimpse of him as he goes past, but he can see that blood is dripping from the other boy's nose and that there’s a cut on his face. He is still in his civilian clothes, on his way back from a mission. The Techs are holding his arms, trying to grab his feet and keep his head from thrashing around so much, though they are having limited success._

_One of their sleeves catches fire. A Tech throws a punch and Six's head snaps to the side from the force of it. He lets out a loud wail of pain and anger._

_ As Seven watches, a Tech with a hypodermic needle in his hand races towards Six, ready to sedate him._

_The Tech jabs the needle into Six’s skin just as the man holding the Seven's right elbow finally manages to muscle him down the hall and into his room. The door slams shut behind him and cuts him off from everything. He hears no more yelling, no more alarms._

_It is at least 24 hours later when Six is returned to the room, battered and bruised and broken. _

_Broken again. Again. _

_Like always. _

_Seven gets the pertinent information from Six once the boy manages to rouse himself. _

_At least two Techs are dead, Six says. They’d called him names and hurt him and tried to use the electric prod on him when he fought back. He’d burned them. They hadn’t had time to set off the ankle band._

_"I was angry," Six whispered when Seven asked him why. He sounded so tired. "I was just so angry. I don't know why.“_

_Mission failure, and then punishment. But Seven had a feeling deep in the pit of his stomach that this time it was different. This wasn’t going to be the end of it. _

_He was right about that. So very, very right._

_So really, it all started with Six._

**Now**

Agent Williams is all the warning Six gets.

It's the only warning he needs.

He'd forgotten his purpose, but the Tech had kindly reminded him. Six can feel the man's gaze on his back as he turns and walks away, winds his way back through the mall. The glare of the man's eyes burns worse than any fire Six could summon. It speaks of a kind of higher judgement that has governed the boy's whole life.

He walks back to the arcade. The kids don't even realize he'd left them, and he supposes that this is telling, in a way. They are children, after all... and he is not like them, not one of them. He comes and he goes, and it doesn't affect them the same way it does him. He doesn't have the option of being careless.

It makes him sad. It is a familiar kind of sadness, at least, but no less painful for it.

And it is tempered with a new kind of knowledge, now. He has some context for that secret yearning he has always felt. That unspoken, unfulfilled desire. He knows what it feels like to be normal... to be real.

He understands Seven and his secret dreams in a way he never has before.

It makes no difference.

He watches the children play their noisy games. He longs to be with them, really with them. To be like them, and to keep them safe. He feels affection and fondness, worry and care. It's distant now, though. He looks at them through a tinted window, through a mirror, darkly.

In his head he is already gone.

They don't seem to notice his change in mood, or if they do they chalk it up to exhaustion and confusion. He is, in truth, very tired and overwhelmed, though not for the reasons they all assume. Satisfied that they have successfully evaded their pursuers for another day - and gorged themselves on pizza and video games in the process - the group finally leaves the mall, takes the bus back to town, and breaks up for the evening.

Six watches carefully as each one says goodbye, knowing that it will likely be the last time he ever sees them. As they all head home, peeling off in opposite directions, he remains still, painfully anchored in the present moment, studying them as they go. He commits the images to memory.

He spends that night in Max's house again. It will be the last night. She makes him cheese and bologna on crackers and they watch TV together until she falls asleep on the couch with her head on his shoulder.

After a while he turns off the TV, gently lays the sleeping girl down on the couch, and covers her with a soft knitted blanket hanging off one of the chairs.

He watches her for a while... it might be a few minutes or it might be a few hours. Who knows? There's no one else awake.

No one except him, and he's a ghost. A boy who doesn't exist... who never existed.

Time to erase himself again.

It's Monday, a school day, and there's not a whole lot the kids can do except go to their classes and hope that Billy reappears by the time they get out. He was gone in the morning, vanished without a trace, and as time marches on the fear that something terrible has happened to him builds and builds.

Max and Dustin in particular are very anxious and upset by this new development. The last time this happened Dustin lost one of his best friends, someone with whom he'd felt an almost instant kinship. For Max, there is a sense of failed responsibility and broken trust. They all fear that this is a tragic repeat of an earlier loss, a broken link not only between them and Six, but them and Seven as well.

They are all keyed up when they go into school, so much so that when the principal comes to fetch them during second period Lucas very nearly lets out a hysterical shriek and Will goes so pale that Mr. Clark is instantly alarmed.

Their nerves are not soothed by Chief Hopper, who is waiting for them when they arrive at Principal Coleman's office. He sits sprawled out in a creaky wooden chair in the center of the room. He takes up so much space, dominating everything, and his eyes seem laser-guided to search out any secrets.

Coleman sits himself behind the desk and Hopper hums thoughtfully.

The kids' first collective thought is that Billy's been caught.

Their second thought is worse... that Billy hasn't been caught, hasn't been found.

Maybe he's been hurt. Maybe he's been taken.

They don't know, they don't know anything, and that makes it all so much worse.

"What's this about?" asks Mike, blustering slightly as the kids take their seats on the lumpy office couch.

"It's okay, kid, you're not in trouble," Hopper says, leaning forward in his chair before throwing the principal a look. "Russell, could you give us a minute?"

"Really shouldn't, Jim," Principal Coleman says. "Accountability to the parents, you know."

Hopper probably does know, but a flash of irritation crosses his face anyway and he chews his lower lip, considering. The kids exchange worried looks as the old cop plasters on a solemn expression.

"Sure, right," he says. "Well, it's like I said. No one's in trouble. I'm just... trying to find someone. A person of interest in the area. We've had reports of vandalism and I have reason to believe you guys might have seen or heard something that could help me find a guy who was... involved. Somewhat. With what happened."

"We don't know anything about crimes. Crime. Vandalism," Lucas corrects himself in an almost-convincing stutter.

"I'm not accusing you of anything..."

"Yeah, because we don't know anything," Mike interjects defensively, hands fluttering in front of him.

Hopper pauses and is met with five sets of blankly staring eyes. He coughs and tries again.

"It's... I need to know if you saw anyone. Anyone odd, around the school or... anywhere. Anyone you don't recognize."

"What do you mean odd?" Will asks.

"Is this someone the school should know about?" Coleman interrupts from his perch behind his desk. "If we need to make the teachers and parents aware of a hoodlum on the loose..."

"It's not...," Hopper starts, then falters. "Just... he, the person we're looking for, he's not dangerous... not exactly dangerous. We just need to talk to him, but it really isn't so serious. We want to keep this low-key, avoid any trouble. If you see him you should absolutely not approach him, though. No one should approach him on their own."

"Jim...," Principal Coleman is looking more and more alarmed by the minute. The kids seem to echo his anxiety.

Hopper desperately wishes the other man would go and let him handle this himself. As it is, he can't say half the things he wants to say, and he can't explain himself fully or intimidate the children into helping him. Every word out of his mouth is a dangerous risk. He scrambles to get to the point before he messes up further...

He knew he should have written down some notes for this.

"He's, um... he's a teenager, about your sister Nancy's age. Blonde hair, blue eyes."

Hopper reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. As one, the kids cease fidgeting and go almost preternaturally still, watching as the cop unfolds a drawing Steve had given to him yesterday to aid in his search. He holds it up and studies their faces carefully, searching for any crack or clue. They study the picture in silence.

A perfect likeness of Six... Billy... stares back at them.

"You're not in any sort of trouble," Hopper repeats yet again, "but if you have seen anyone... any strangers... I need you to tell me. If you've seen this boy, you need to tell me. And if you see him after this, you need to call me and then you need stay away from him. Understand?"

Silence.

"Have you seen the boy or anyone else odd? Any adults? Any older children?"

"Why?" Dustin asks, voice weirdly hollow-sounding. Lucas kicks him and Dustin kicks back. "What's he done? Specifically?"

"I can't go into that. It's just a question, kid. Yes or no?"

"No," Mike says. "We haven't seen anyone. No one we don't know."

"Where did you get that? That drawing?" Will asks, voice cracking slightly. Dustin shoots his friend a glance and then looks at the picture again, eyes widening slightly.

"It's from someone helping us with out inquiries," Hopper snaps out. "Have you seen him?"

"No," Max replies just as sharply. "We haven't seen anybody."

"Alright," Hopper huffs. He feels like the kids are acting off, but to be honest after living with Eleven and Steve he's lost all perspective in terms of how normal kids are supposed to behave.

Maybe they really haven't seen Six. Maybe he isn't coming. Maybe they aren't all in danger. 

"Who's helping you? With your inquiries?" Dustin asks. "Who drew that?"

"Alright, I think we're done here," Coleman interjects, finally deciding that the conversation is too weird to continue. 

It's a fortunate interruption, probably, because Hopper is unsure how to answer. He's felt wrong-footed throughout this entire interview.

He knows what Steve would want him to say. 

_Your friend, your secret, dangerous friend - he's alive, he's safe, he's in a cabin in the woods. You absolutely can't see him. It'll put us all at risk, put us all right on Brenner's radar... but he's safe, you aren't crazy, he's safe, he misses you._

He wishes he could say that. Truly. But he is also ruled by that old familiar paranoia, that wariness that has served him so well over the years.

He folds the paper up and tucks it in his pocket. He maintains his rigid, impregnable silence.

He meets Dustin's gaze but keeps his face an unreadable mask. It doesn't stop the boy from glaring at him, his eyes wide with confusion and panic and just a small, dangerous streak of hope.

Murray Bauman is without a doubt one of the most annoying parts of Hopper's life. This is quite an accomplishment given that the cop currently lives with not one but two angst-ridden, mutant teenagers.

Hopper is still mulling over his conversation with the kids, weighing his instincts against their protestations of innocence, so he isn't as prepared to deal with the man as he usually is. After running a few errands and slowly making his way back to the station, his interview at the school is still very much on his mind.

He wonders what he's going to tell Steve, certain that nothing he could say would calm the poor kid's fears.

He climbs out of his car and is not even two steps away from the station's front entrance when Bauman descends like a giant bald eagle.

"Jim..."

"No," Hopper shakes his head and keeps walking.

"There's been a sighting..." Murray tries again.

"No."

"Hunters in the woods going missing... instances of lights flashing and going out, creatures on the edge of town..."

"No."

"Dammit, Hopper! It is your job...!"

"It's not my job to hunt little green men and Russian spies and the goddamn Loch Ness Monster, alright?" Hopper stops trying to get around Murray and resigns himself to having the rest of this conversation on the sidewalk. He knows that if the man follows him into the station they'll be no getting rid of him.

"How many times I gotta tell you, Murray?" he continues, breathing deeply to avoid punching the irritatingly persistent conspiracy theorist. "I live in the woods myself and I've never seen anything you or your fellow loonies are describing. No flashing lights, no monsters, no alien abductions. You got a parking ticket to pay or a theft to report, we can talk some more."

"Earl Straub said he saw a strange dog-like creature in in Hawkins Woods. Just by the train tracks."

"Earl Straub is a drunk."

"I hardly think you of all people should be discounting his word because of that."

"Watch it, Murray. You're on thin ice..."

"There was a sighting at the mall yesterday."

There is the briefest of pauses before Hopper blinks and picks up the thread of the conversation again.

"The mall, huh?"

"Yes."

"Didn't think you stooped to going to that - what did you call it at the last town hall meeting? - 'hub of capitalist waste'?"

"I have a weakness for their hot dogs on sticks," Murray sniffs. "That's not the point."

"Uh huh."

"The point is that as I was sitting in the food court my handheld equipment picked up an overwhelming surge of telekinetic energy coming from a nearby store. It was only a temporary phenomenon but the readings indicate the presence of an enhanced individual of extraordinary capabilities."

"'Enhanced individual'", Hopper echoes. "What, like an alien? A mutant?"

_A rogue science experiment turned angsty, rebellious preteen? _

"Please take this seriously, Jim."

"Oh, yeah, very serious," Hopper says, his voice dripping with sarcasm even though his heart is pounding loudly in his chest. "Where did you say this surge came from?"

"From the GAP."

"...Right."

"But I went to investigate and found that there had in fact been a disturbance in the store. A display was knocked over and the culprits had escaped undetected after framing a young man who insisted he was innocent."

"What makes you think it wasn't just some customer who ran into the display?"

"Please, Jim... it's too much of coincidence with that AND my readings."

Hopper sighs loudly and keeps walking, trying to put some distance in between himself and the conspiracy theorist. A sudden thought occurs to him, though, and he slows.

"Murray? You haven't seen anyone weird around town, have you? Anyone specific? No teenage boys... blonde hair, blue eyes? Haven't seen more vans or unfamiliar cars driving around than usual, or any kids loitering or acting off somehow?"

"No," Murray shakes his head, eyes brightening with eagerness. "Why?"

"Nothing," Hopper says, burying his fears underneath his usual dismissive tone. "Just heard the Ruskies had infiltrated the Bell Telephone Company and were disguising themselves as handymen. Read it last week in the National Enquirer."

"Damn it, Jim!"

Hopper finally manages to disentangle himself from Murray, much to his relief. He is confident that he has more or less put the man off the scent, though this is probably more thanks to Bauman's limited understanding of the situation as a whole than because of any superior lying skills on the cop's part. 

The truth is almost too simple, and that's what keeps Murray from guessing it.

As for the kids, Hopper isn't sure what to do. He's pretty sure they're lying to him, but on the other hand they are clearly all in one piece and closing ranks to protect themselves. 

He's got to figure out some way to track the men from the Lab. He needs to know when the heat is off, when they get some breathing room. He needs to find a way to get the kids out to see Steve. 

He's just as disturbed now at the thought of Steve's breakdown as he was when the boy tried to kiss him last night - more so, even, because he's had some time to consider the situation.

It is clear to him that the kid is all turned around, that he's struggling to contextualize the things happening to him in a healthy way.

It's not surprising, but it hurts - the thought that the kid felt he needed to pay Hopper back somehow. The knowledge that Steve feels so isolated and lonely, so desperate for comfort that he believed he had no other choice than reach out in that way, offering himself up as a sacrifice just to earn some affectionate touches. 

The kid really hadn't understood the difference between the touches of a lover and those of a friend. Hopper still isn't convinced that he understands now.

That on top of Eleven's not wholly unwarranted accusation that Hopper is keeping them shut away in the cabin, and the fact that being cut off from the rest of the world is taking a more severe psychological toll on both children than he had anticipated... 

The image of Steve stretched out on an altar, a virgin sacrifice waiting to be devoured by a ravening monster like some shrieking starlet in an old creature feature, has been haunting Hopper all day. It's not an analogy that he likes, particularly, but it dogs his thoughts anyway.

And last night, when he'd sat down and had a think about what he could do or say to make Steve understand, he'd drawn a blank. He has no answers - just more of the same stuff he's been saying, more of what he's already tried to teach the boy.

Hopper doesn't know what to do to fix this. It was easier with Eleven - the kid was about ten or so when he found her, he hasn't had to deal with the whole 'birds and bees' thing yet - but Steve is very solidly a teenager, with all the angst and trouble that this time of life brings. 

The only thing he can do, he decides, is to keep giving the boy things to enjoy and explore and experience.

Other people will help. Steve is rather smart, emotionally. He can learn the different ways of loving people if he has the opportunity to do so. He needs... he _deserves_ to be around friends who will support him without demanding anything in return. Hopper will have to find a way to make that happen. 

He'd bring Steve the world if he could.

Hopper will find a way to fix this. One way or another. He has to.

Steve paces in the living room. He's done that a lot since he first dreamed of Six and the children.

Eleven is going to start thinking it's all he knows how to do. Or, she would think so if she'd deign to leave her room long enough to observe him. She hasn't emerged since her fight with Hopper, who just this morning, drowning in belated feelings of regret, stood outside her door twisting his hat in his hands before shouting a final gruff order and leaving for work.

Steve could cheerfully murder them both for their stupidity, but accepts that they will get there in their own time. 

He knows that the ones you love are also the ones who can hurt you the most, and usually because of mutual stubbornness.

In fact it is this very idea that is bothering him now. In a way he's glad that he has some alone time while El sorts through her anger and frustration and Hopper leaves to fulfill his promise to warn the kids. He also has some things to rearrange in his head.

He is pacing, but it is not with the same kind of restless energy he had before. He's more pensive than worried.

He's thinking of Six, and Hopper, and the incident last night, and the brief exchange he had with old cop in the kitchen this morning.

_"You don't need to be sorry, and you don't need to be ashamed, kid," Hopper says, scooping a pile of eggs onto a plate. He throws a worried look at El's bedroom door, still firmly shut since last night, before turning his full attention back to Steve._

_"Believe it or not, I was young once, too. I remember how it can be. I know it's different for you because of where you came from, but in a lot of ways it's the same. Everything is so intense when you're a teenager. Sex, love, hate, anxiety. You're not broken, Steve. You just need to find a new way to cope. To let things out."_

_"I can't do that," Steve replies. "When I let things out it's all wrong. People get hurt. My fault."_

_"Nobody got hurt. It really isn't that serious..."_

_"You didn't want it."_

_"No. I didn't. And when I said so, you stopped. I don't think you really wanted it either, Steve."_

_"I..." Steve looks down, shamefaced. "I did. I do."_

_"Alright," Hopper replies mildly. "But did you want me? Or did you just want 'it'?"_

_The older man speaks with the air of a person who has given the matter some thought, and indeed he spent most of last night mulling this particular problem over in his head.__ This nuanced question is effective, apparently. It interrupts Steve's spiral of self-loathing and the boy is forced to consider it, _ _rubbing the fabric of his sweater, thinking. _

_"_ _I... I wanted to be close to you. I wanted to be grateful. I wanted to make you happy. I wanted you to..." _ _S__teve pauses here and looks up at Hopper, who raises his eyebrow slightly and nods. "_ _...I wanted **someone** to touch me. I do... I do miss it. With Six. Touching. It makes me feel... safe. Happy. I only wanted to do it with Six, before. But... it would be okay if you touched me. You wouldn't hurt me. I know you wouldn't. You're not like..."_

_Steve flinches and falls silent. He doesn't want to tell Hopper that. He doesn't want to go into details about what... who... Hopper isn't like._

_Hopper accepts Steve's silence, but he doesn't relent on the other point._

_"But I'm not like Six. It's not about sex with me, is it? You don't feel the same way about me as you do about Six."_

_"I could," the boy looks up and the cop can see the desperation there. It breaks his heart in two. "I could. I think. If you wanted. It would be okay if it was you. I could learn."_

_"I know, kid," the older man sighs. "You're wonderful like that. Special. I hope you never lose that ability... that faith. You're a... a compassionate boy... a compassionate man. That's important. Empathy. But you have choices now, Steve. You don't have to make do. You don't have to make yourself love someone just because there isn't anyone else. You're enough as you are. You can do whatever you need to. You're allowed to have what you need without compromising."_

_"Com..compromising?"_

_"C-o-m...promise," Hopper sounds it out. "It's something that's kind of in-between. It's like half-way happy. You should have what you need without having to exchange things or change parts of yourself."_

_Steve sucks in a breath and lets it out in a miserable huff._

_"Steve, look at me." Hopper puts the plate down on the counter top and pulls the boy towards him. "You didn't hurt me. You stopped when I said no, and that makes you a better person than Brenner and every other man in that damn Lab, okay? It's your choices that make you a good person, not your past. You can let things out. You should let things out."_

_Steve nods, unconvinced, and doesn't fight when the cop pulls him into a warm embrace and gently kisses the top of his head._

_"I know it's hard. I know. But... listen. I'll never stop hugging you, okay? Whenever you need to be held... whenever you're lonely, you come to me or El. We'd never turn you down for something like that. You start feeling like the walls are closing in or like you don't have anyone, tell me. I can't... can't do the other, but I can hug you. I can hold you. I will, whenever you want. We love you, kiddo. You're gonna be okay." _

Remembering it now, Steve can identify exactly what it is that's been bothering him.

It's strange, but Steve wasn't even sure the cop entirely realized what he'd said.

He'd said 'love'.

It's only been a week or thereabouts... seven days is a week. Seven. Only that, but the old cop said 'we love you' and meant it.

Brenner and Six and Williams and all the rest... they linger. They lurk. They are a part of Seven... and a part of Steve, too. Steve sank into despair last night, the weight of his _wrongness_ bearing down on him. He woke up this morning curled up on the couch, his eyes crusted over with tears, ready to tell Hopper he would leave them alone, go away forever and never bother him or El with his pathetic dreams and invasive needs again.

And the old man had hugged him and told him he loved him.

He said he was good.

He said he was safe.

In the quiet of the cabin, as Steve stands there alone at the window, watching the sunlight streaming through the leave canopy and making dancing patterns on the ground, a quiet voice in his head says...

_Maybe..._

_Maybe..._

_Yes._

It's a strange revelation, and yet it is one in keeping with the way of things. Like most revelations it is unexpected, accidental, quiet, private. Lightning out of a clear blue sky.

Something has changed. Something has clicked.

_I kissed him and the world didn't end. I kissed him (Hopper, Papa, Father, Lover, Protector) and he didn't hurt me or kill me or kiss me back. Nobody is hurt, nobody is angry. I kissed him and I'm still me. I haven't changed. I'm still here._

_I'm still here._

_Rain. Rain. Wolves in the woods. Wire. Toast. Waffles. Crayon. Balloons. Baby. Cherry Garcia. Moron. Robin. Eleven. Hopper. Dustin. Will. Mike. Lucas. Max. Brenner. Papa. Six._

_Mine. Me._

_Me._

_Choices, choices, not wrong or right, just choices, I choose, I choose._

_I keep choosing. I choose who I am. Forward. Moving forward. Bloodied and tired and lost but moving, moving, moving forward._

_That's the difference between life here and life back in the Lab. In there everything was dead... stuck in the same place, doing the same thing, forever and ever._

_Out here I'm changing. I'm learning. I'm feeling. I'm growing. I'm moving forward. Like a plant, I push out and up and reach for the sun. _

_Seven. _

_Steven. _

_Steve._

For the first time Steve feels like Hopper might be right.

He doesn't have to be afraid. Not the way he was before.

Because he's made a decision, you see. 

He's not going back. Not back to the Lab. Not back to Brenner.

Not backwards.

_I'm not going_ _back._

_I'm never going back._

He feels defiant. Angry. It's cold and sharp and clarifying in all the best ways.

The fear has slipped into something more solid. He had ice cream yesterday. He went to the mall. He'd been almost paralyzed with terror at the thought of Six coming for him, and then he'd had a glimpse of all the wonders and miracles he stood to lose if he did.

And what Hopper said about _wanting_ and _choosing_...

_I don't want Six anymore._

_I want the miracles._

Yes. He can do this. 

He should test this out. He knows how, too. He hadn't misunderstood Hopper's hint before.

He knows what to do to test this.

Steve understands physicality. The basic human need for touch was something central to his experiences in the Lab - the giving and the denial of that most fundamental source of comfort. 

He'd thought he understood. He'd been sure, but then he'd peeked into Hopper's head last night and realized that there is a whole new set of rules he knew nothing about. Well, not rules exactly. Boundaries, maybe. Categories. Lines in the sand.

He'd violated them without thinking because the only constraints that formerly governed his own life were so simple - 'want to touch' and 'do not want to touch'. What touches cause pain and what touches cause pleasure.

Of course, that distinction wasn't even one he or any of the Numbers could enforce most of the time... it always came back to what was allowed to them and what was forced upon them against their will.

_We're husbands_, Six had told him with some frequency. He'd been so fond of that word. _We're husbands and that means it is you and me, us, only us, forever._

Touches and kisses and affection were between him and Six... no one else. They were bound by the word and by the things they felt for each other.

Love, Steve supposes. Must have been love.

But even so, it wasn't true what Six said. Others had invaded Six, touched him and tried to break up what the two boys shared. Forces beyond their control twisted everything they were and everything they had.

And then, finally, when it was Seven's turn to be broken and hurt, Six had stood by and let it happen. He hadn't said a word. 

And Seven is angry at Six now. He's so very, very angry. Six lied to him about what the world is like, told him it was nothing but danger and cruelty. He's out there now, searching, looking for Steve so he can take all this wonder and joy away again. So he can force Steve to stay with him. So he doesn't have to be alone.

Six is still here even when he isn't here. He's still keeping Seven from fully being in the world.

It doesn't matter that Seven secretly understands, that he feels the same fear and pain that Six does. That he is also afraid of being abandoned and alone.

He loves Six. He never wants him to be hurt.

He is still so angry, though.

Seven... Steve aches. Now that the shock and fear have waned slightly in the comfort of this hidden cabin in the woods, he feels a familiar longing, a need for intimacy. For release.

He is fueled by need but also by fury. 

Fury that he has been denied this freedom for so long.

Eleven is occupied, reading in her room. Steve double checks on her and then slips quietly into his own small, private space, his little closet.

After a moment's hesitation, he sits on the edge of his cot, and then lies down. He looks up at the cracks that litter his ceiling and takes a deep breath, letting his eyes drop closed after a brief moment.

He knows what to do, of course. He's done this before, plenty of times. But this is the first time he will do it as a free man.

It's the first time he will do this as 'Steve' and not as 'Seven'.

He tentatively unbuttons and unzips the top of his jeans. He licks one hand, wetting it, and then sticks it down past the waistband of his underwear to grasp his cock. His fingers find their place - it feels good. Familiar. He strokes himself tentatively, a little smile on his lips.

He blinks his eyes open and then closes them again, trying to summon a pleasing image to help himself along.

An image comes.

It is clear and sharp and colorful.

It cuts. He bleeds.

Steve immediately freezes.

He's made a mistake. He fumbles in his movements.

The things that aroused him in the past are all connected with Six. The image that comes to his mind now is of Six.

_Six._

The moan that escapes Steve now is a mix of arousal and frustration.

Six's hands touching him, his mouth on Steve's cock or hole or lips, his hard member pressed against him.

Six's blue eyes, gentle and laughing. His wide smile, all teeth, red lips stretching as they promised sweet kisses. His soft, smooth skin. The silky, golden curls Steve loved to run his fingers through, lazily scratching at the scalp and drawing out a low moan of pleasure from the other boy. That comforting solid weight of his warm body.

No.

_No._

He's mad at Six. Six is bad. Six is the enemy, Brenner's pet, a threat to the children and to Hopper and to Steve. He's a liar. 

And even if he wasn't any of those things, Steve still needs it to not be him who gives him this pleasure. He needs to draw a line where Six ends and Steve starts.

Steve doesn't want it. He doesn't want Six.

He _doesn't._

He doesn't want him to be the reason he feels pleasure or happiness. It's tainted now. It's _wrong_.

Wrong.

_We're husbands..._

The thought makes Steve sad. So, so sad.

He feels a deep stirring of grief in his bones and it frightens him. Loss... he's feeling loss. That's what this is...

He's lost Six. This is grief that's haunting him, grief he's running from. There's no other word for it, and all the fantasies and dreams crumble in under the weight of reality and what that means.

Here is the truth.

In the best of all possible worlds Six would never find Seven here, never capture him and bring him back to the Lab. If he wants to stay a free man, Seven can never see his cruel-kind husband again.

This is terrible possibility is also the thing Seven should be wishing for the most. He needs to pray and hope that he never sees Six again because if or when he does... then it's over.

Because even if that happens, even if Six comes... Seven's lost him anyway. 

There is no going back.

_I'm not going back. Something has changed in me and it can't go back to the way it was._

It hurts. It hurts terribly, and Steve can feel the overwhelming potential of this pain. If he tips over the edge it will swallow him whole.

He doesn't want that. He pulls back. He makes himself push it away.

He summons thoughts of Hopper. That now-familiar, comforting smell of whiskey and wood smoke, flannel and flesh. Warm and soft and big, those giant paws firm and anchoring on his shoulders.

He wasn't lying before. Steve could like this, love this. Could learn to appreciate that shape and smell and taste. The feel of a soft belly instead of a firm one pressed against him. Would Hopper have that sensitive bit just under the belly button like Six has, or...? 

No... we're not thinking of Six, but Hopper has scruffy facial hair and Six was thinking of growing his out, and Steve could run his fingers through thinning brown hair instead of soft curls. He could love those shoulders, so much broader than Six's, and the way Hopper embraces him and keeps the world away. Thick, calloused fingers running down his chest, down to his cock... 

The solid form wrapping him up in a tight embrace. The brush of his mustache against his lips from that ill-fated attempt to kiss him...

Steve stalls again, feels suddenly horribly guilty and a little sick. The memory blocks out everything else. Hopper didn't want him to kiss him. Not in that way. He said it was okay, that it wasn't a big deal, but still... maybe even thinking about him like this is wrong...

His erection, only half-mast to begin with, flags. Steve can feel release slipping away. He tightens his fist and tugs at his member and tries to claw his way back to the haze of arousal.

He doesn't need Six for this.

He _doesn't_.

He doesn't need to think about specifics. He doesn't need faces or features. He can lose himself to touch, surely. He is warm now, he is wrapped in clothes that smell nice, and he knows how to touch himself.

He understands touch. He should do, anyway. It was everything for him before. It was currency, it was salvation, it was identity. The defining boundary between him and everyone else. To give and to receive. 

He understands.

Fingers pressing against his skin, pulling and tugging and demanding more and more from him. 

It's not Hopper because Hopper would never do that, but Steve would rather it was Hopper now. Better Hopper than the other one, the one who is like Hopper... Brenner. Papa. Father, daddy... a boy's first model for God. Papa had never been interesting in having sex with any of the Numbers, of course, but he still dictated every touch and taste and sensation. He picked out their sexual partners and determined what they did and when.

He's there anyway, all wrapped up in Seven's complicated, twisted understanding of desire and power and need.

He tries to block it, control the images in his head. He doesn't want these people in his head.

Just... just skin. Skin on skin. Warmth. He's growing hard in his own hand. A firm yet gentle grip.

Hands on him.

Faces.

Williams. McCormick. They were like hands.

Brenner's hands.

Their faces loom now, suddenly, and even though his eyes are already shut Steve squeezes them more tightly closed and fumbles in his strokes.

Hands. Power. Power over Steve. He likes it even though he knows he shouldn't. He ran and hurt himself and almost died trying to get away from the men who wielded power like cruel knives over Seven's vulnerable body... but now it's what he dreams of, and he likes it.

Likes being held because being held means he's safe and cared for and real.

Likes being held.

Held down.

Demanding. Demanding means desire. He is desired. He is wanted. He is wanted even when he doesn't want it himself, even when he hates it. There is safety and comfort in being wanted, even when it's terrible.

Six hurts him because he loves him. Williams wants him because he can't have him. Brenner needs to keep him, needs Seven under him... 

Williams.

Brenner.

Hopper.

Six.

Touching him.

Hurting him.

Oh, he's tired.

He's so tired of pain and confusion. He's tired of being a thing, a toy, just an object to be moved around and used. He ran... he fought back. He proved that he's more than that, more than what everyone thought he was.

But he still wants to be touched. He wants to be held. He wants it from all of them and none of them. It's a weakness, perhaps, but it's one he can't shake. He doesn't know how to change it... he can't make it anything else. He tugs at his cock and presses his finger into that open wound on his soul.

He wants.

And he doesn't.

They've taken this away, haven't they? They've ruined it. Stolen it.

Steve lets out a despairing sob.

He can't do this. 

He _can't._

It's right. It's wrong.

His hand slows. He forces air into his lungs is short, gasping bursts.

He opens his eyes and stares up at the cracks in the ceiling, and the visions come, unbidden.

_Seven tilts his head back, his fingers wrapping themselves around to Six’s curls. He scratches the scalp and tugs a little at the loose strands. Six likes that, moans around Seven’s cock as he sucks him down, and Seven smiles._

_With a slurping noise Six pulls off suddenly, and Seven huffs in frustration. They are together now and they have the whole night..._

The whole night. Yeah, he remembers that feeling. A wonderful feeling. The lights go off and a hush falls briefly before Six and Seven let out a matching pair of soft, happy noises. All night, all night, they have all night to cuddle and sleep and give pleasure and receive pleasure back. They are free then, as free as they can be, in those moments when it's just the two of them.

Intimate. Sacred.

_Six nuzzles his cock and gazes up at him, eyes fiery with a look that is very familiar to Seven. Seven's throat goes dry and his cheeks heat up. He loves that look._

_Ever responsive, Seven grins, stretches his arms above his head, and preens. He bites his lower lip, making it shiny and red, while his swollen cock bounces against his stomach, aroused and neglected. He whines, needy and wanton and eager for more pleasure._

_The fire in Six’s eyes grows brighter._

_“Pretty,” he murmurs._

Pretty. Beautiful. Husband. Mine.

Steve's hand is moving again, lazy, almost unconscious. He feels a gentle rise of pleasure and doesn't fight it. For once he doesn't allow himself to overthink it.

He keeps going. Keeps touching. Keeps stroking.

He's on his own. Alone. Alone, but not lonely.

No right. No wrong. Just him, and these touches, and this feeling.

_“Shut up!” Seven chokes out. He is utterly miserable. “This is all your fault! I told you to let me go… I could have made it! Why couldn’t you just…?”_

_“You can’t go.” Seven can hear the despair, the desperation in Six's voice. It kills him, it's horrible, and it crashes up against the terribly agony of his own disappointment. He feels himself crack inside... he feels himself break with pity and love._

_“You can’t go. You belong here. You have to stay with me.”_

How terrible it is to be loved like that, with that kind of single-minded ferocity and devotion. How amazing and how terrible to be wanted that much...

_Six bites at Seven's throat, leaves purple bruises behind..._

_"Did you like the last fireball?" Six asks. "The one that went in a circle?"_

_"There once was a little boy who told lies," Brenner intones. "He went into the woods one day, and..."_

_Williams speaks, slowly and carefully, as if he is trying to say something important. _ _"You can keep it," he says. "For the nights. For the dreams. To help you."_

_"We love you, Steve."_

Their faces blur... and Steve is afraid but he is also hard. Wet. He feels a sicking, shameful thrill of forbidden desire. Part of his is screaming at the wrongness of it but another part of him feels powerful. 

He can choose. This is like those other choices, isn't it? There is power here, power that used to belong to other people... but he had it too, he just didn't realize, and now that he can choose, he sees that he had power... he has power.

He can take this. 

_You're allowed to have what you need. You can take what you need._

His hand moves fast, tight. His breath comes in fast pants. 

Yes.

He feels strangely awake now. Strangely focused and in control.

He can choose now. 

** Then **

_Two days after Six's outburst in the van and the death of Agents McCormick and Johnson, Brenner takes both Six and Seven to Lab Room 3. _

_Seven knows then that they are in trouble. Brenner never takes them anywhere together unless it's a specified training exercise. He doubts very much that there will be training today, with Six still in such a volatile emotional state and a severely damaged physical one._

_Seven needs to wrap a hand around Six’s arm just to keep him upright… he is still so sore from his punishment._

_Lab 3 is a medium-sized room, empty of everything but a chair and a stripped-down medical bed positioned off to the side. When they walk in, Brenner is there, along with Williams. _

_Brenner dismisses the Tech who brought them in. He glares at Seven but Seven, ever defiant, keeps his hand on Six, sliding it down his arm so he can wrap his fingers around his lover’s sweaty palm._

_Six catches Brenner’s look, however, and pulls his hand away, puts some distance between himself and Seven. Seven doesn't flinch at the tacit rejection, but it's a near thing._

_“There was an incident a few days ago,” Brenner begins._

_Typical understatement. The truth in a lie._

_ “It was a moment of aggression. Something that should never have been allowed to get that far out of hand. This is why we need to learn control. So easily a moment can turn into something more, something outside of our control. There are consequences to these moments..."_

_Brenner lifts up a hand as if to say - 'And here we are'._

_"This cannot be tolerated. We're doing important things in this place, and such outbursts are disruptions that set us back significantly. I feel that you two do not appreciate what we are trying to do here. I believe that you are having trouble grasping the... consequences of such an outrageous lack of self-discipline."_

_Williams shifts slightly in the corner. Seven risks a quick glance at Six, who remains stock-still and completely focused on Brenner._

_"It's unacceptable, Six," Brenner murmurs, his voice almost gentle. "We discussed this. We've discussed this many times. The fact that you will not fully utilize the resources made available to you simply shows me that the lesson has not yet sunk in."_

_That finally gets a reaction out of the blonde, who flinches and drops his gaze to the ground. Seven looks up in confusion and Brenner nods slightly._

_“The reason I brought you in here, Seven, is because you are at least partially responsible for what happened the other day. The deaths of those men are on you as well as Six."_

_Seven knows what Papa is doing. It's an old power-play of his. And although he is trying very hard not to feel the sour curdle of guilt - the only good Tech is a dead Tech, after all - an unpleasant sensations twists in the boy's gut._

_I won't, he thinks, gritting his teeth. Whatever it is, I won't do it. Whatever he wants, he won't get it._

_It's a ridiculous thought that evaporates almost instantly in the face of this awful reality._

_"Your…," Brenner's mouth turns down in a display of distaste, "...friendship… with each other is allowed to continue because it helps curb Six’s more aggressive impulses. It is a privilege given to you, a gift... and if it fails to achieve the desired effects then it serves no purpose, yes? Have you two had intercourse yet?”_

_Seven is startled by this question, though he shouldn’t be, maybe. Nothing about their lives is secret, so perhaps the only real surprise is that Brenner is phrasing this as a question and not a statement._

_“Yes,” Six answers quietly, flatly. “We have.”_

_“Including anal penetration?”_

_Why would Brenner possibly want to know that? Seven wonders, bewildered. What does that have to do with anything?_

_“Yes,” Six answers._

_“When was the last time?”_

_Seven feels a pang of irritation even though he remains stubbornly silent. Like there’s any way to tell time in this place… he is aware of the concept of dates and days but it’s hardly like they have a means of keeping track. _

_Six, too, hesitates. He senses that there is a wrong answer here, but the truth is that he doesn’t know when the last time was. _

_Six knows what Brenner is asking – when is the last time he anally penetrated Seven with his penis? The Techs call it ‘fucking', and Brenner seems to think that this act - and not touching with hands or using mouths or enjoying any of the other creative ways Six and Seven achieve pleasure - is the most effective way of curbing Six's aggression. _

_It's something about the dynamics of such an exchange... or maybe it's the amount of energy used up when they do it. There seem to be some preconceived notions about his and Seven's roles and relationship that are more fully reflected in the act of 'fucking'. Who fucks and who is fucked? The answer is apparently important, though the nuanced difference between the two is lost on Six._

_Six never understood this assumption, never applied it in any conscious way to his relationship with Seven, but for someone who has not, as far as Six knows, ever engaged in homosexual intercourse, Brenner attaches a lot of meaning to this one specific sexual act as the true test of dominance and submission, aggression and compliance._

_But he and Seven are rarely intimate in that way. Either deliberately or out of a careless lack of concern, no one has ever given the boys anything to use as lubricant. Six's spit can only do so much, and it takes so much time to stretch Seven to the point where it doesn’t hurt. _

_And Six never wants to hurt Seven. Not really. _

_Not like that. _

_(And perhaps that is the real issue here.)_

_Brenner apparently reads everything he needs to see in Six’s hesitation. A flicker of something like disdain flashes across his face before he schools his expression into one of distant, academic interest. He tilts his head to Williams, who moves forward... forward towards Seven._

_“We’re going to have a demonstration now, Six. I want you both to pay attention.”_

_Every one of Seven’s instincts fire off at once. He doesn't need his abilities to see, suddenly, exactly where this is going. Six goes pale and still and terrified, figures twitching to reach out to Seven but trapped by Brenner’s gaze. He doesn't move otherwise. He doesn't speak._

_Perhaps it is silly, stupid, utterly ridiculous for Seven to feel betrayed by Six's inaction._

_Perhaps._

_He isn't given a chance to dwell on it._

_Williams grabs holds of Seven’s arms none too gently and shoves him towards the bare hospital bed. Unable to keep his balance between of the push and the sudden rush of terror that weakens his knees and threatens to cripple him, Seven stumbles against it. He grips the edge tightly, the metal bar on the side pressing into his stomach, and lets out a low moan. His fingers grasp at the thin mattress as he tries to draw something from its relative solidity._

_Seven’s shirt rips as the Tech grabs him again and just like that any sense of stability is gone again. He can feel the world slipping out from under his feet… down and out and under and away. In every sense of the word, he is slipping._

_“Six,” he chokes out in a weak whisper, frightened and desperate. Six makes a wounded noise in response but doesn’t move._

_“There’s no room for sentiment in this, Six," Brenner says. "You will use Seven accordingly as a means of curbing these unfortunate outbursts, or there will be more serious consequences.”_

_Williams is tugging at Seven’s pants now, pushing them down, and there’s no mistaking his intentions. _

_Seven’s breathing is becoming erratic. _

_“No,” he whispers. "Please no."_

_No one listens. No one ever listens._

_It is like he is in one of his nightmares, in one of the vivid, violent, frightening ones. Only this time Six is wrong about what nightmares are, that they aren't real – this is very real, and it can hurt him._

_It will hurt him. _

_Hurt both of them._

_Break them._

_“No,” he says again, louder, voice cracking. "Don't! I'm sorry! Please... stop..."_

_Hands are on his skin and they are the wrong hands… the wrong hands. They are not familiar and warm... they are not even cold and clinical. They are not something he can separate himself from. He can't pretend they are anything other than what they are. _

_They are hands that want… they grasp and clutch and push in and stroke and fondle. They are hands that take and hold and hold down._

_They are not hands that love._

_"Stop it!"_

_They are wrong, they belong to the wrong person, and that wrong person presses himself against Seven, his breath hot on the back of his neck and his cock hard as it puhses against his backside._

_The boy lets out a moan, terrified and repulsed. He kicks out, but that does little to stop the older man from pawing at him. It just makes the hands go tighter, punishing as they push him down, bend him over._

_The hands demand and hurt and take. They find his softest, most secret places, and they lay claim to them without mercy._

_He can hear Brenner talking more nonsense. He can't hear much over the roaring in his ears but he knows that Six is crying… he can feel it in his core. He can feel it from five feet away._

_He can see what is happening. He knows._

_He knows the consequences._

_He sees it all play out, the next few minutes, the next hours, the next days. They flash before his eyes and he sees. _

_He sees it but he can't stop it._

_He never could._

_He closes his eyes and screams._

_If a boisterous, ill-fated Tech named McCormick had not gotten overly familiar with Six in the back of a nondescript van on their way to a mission, Six would have never acted out the way he did, burning alive McCormick and Johnson, the van’s driver, and crashing the vehicle into the side of the road. _

_Six would never have been brought back to the Lab and Brenner to face unforgiving retribution, and would not have, albeit unwittingly, put Seven in Brenner's cross hairs._

_Six’s great affection – some would say love – for Seven would not have been forcibly reshaped into such a wretched tool for punishment. _

_If all that had not happened, Seven would never have been pushed down and sexually assaulted by Agent Williams. _

_He would never have closed his eyes, and screamed, and manifested his powerful abilities on a measurable scale for the very first time._

_Lab Room 3 exploded with Seven’s scream. The boy who had never had any special gifts to speak of sent out a powerful pulse of psychic energy that ripped out the walls, shattered the light bulbs in the ceiling, sent a cascade of glass and debris careening through the room, and threw the three other men present flying away from him. _

_The explosion destroyed the room, and the fragile lie that had kept the boy hidden right under Papa's nose for years._

_It shattered all of their perceptions._

_If it wasn’t for an ill-timed word, no one might ever have known how powerful Seven was._

_For want of a nail a kingdom was lost. So it was for Seven._

** Now **

Steve comes.

It hits him hard and fast. His vision in blurred with tears, and in his mind's eye the many faces of the men who have touched him swirl together in an endless circle. His need is tied up in his memories of pain and fear, of longing and love, and a part of him hates it and another part is nothing more or less than _satisfied_.

On a very basic level he is past the point of shame. The important thing is that, as Hopper said, he has what he needs. 

He needed it, and he took it, and that's all there is. All that matters.

He blinks up and feels a strange mix of sorrow and joy.

Lost...

He's lost. 

The world came crashing down that day, the day Papa decided to try out his new punishment on Seven. Just an ordinary day, just a few weeks ago. Seven made a choice and saw a way out and changed everything.

He changed all their lives that day.

He screamed and broke and the world exploded, and after that Papa knew what he could do. After that the real torture began, the tests and the trials and the time in the Bathtub, the time in the shadow-world of monsters.

And Seven knew then that he needed to get out. Get out or die trying.

Because it wasn't him. He couldn't be what Brenner wanted. He might die if he left, might be terribly hurt... but he would die for certain if he stayed. A quiet kind of death. Death by a thousand small cuts, over the course of a short and wasted lifetime.

He can't go back.

He won't.

He's lost. Lost.

Lost like the boy in the woods in Brenner's twisted fairy tale. Away from home, from the castle and the dragon who guards it.

Wandering all alone in the land of wolves.

He touches his softening, still-sensitive cock, runs his fingers through the sticky spend on his stomach. He feels release... released. Settled and in control of his thoughts. There is power here, he thinks. He can do this. They didn't take this away.

He thinks Six would maybe even be perversely happy that it was the memory of his face and his tongue in Seven's hole that finally tipped Steve over the edge.

How... how wonderful it is to be lost. How pure.

How mighty he is.

The lost boy.

Hopper is absorbed in his thoughts and plans. He wraps up his conversation with Bauman and heads into the station and he never even notices that he's being watched.

He doesn't notice Six slip out of a nearby side-alley and begin trailing the cop from a distance. He didn't see him at the school where the boy first picked up his trail, and he never clocked him following him back to town and the police station.

He doesn't know that the person he is looking for, the person he should fear the most, has heard everything the cop said to that silly, balding man with the overcoat and glasses. He doesn't know that this strange spy has picked up all the important clues, has mulled them over and put them together and come to one damning conclusion.

Murray Bauman may not know what's going on, but Six does.

He knows where his goal lies, now. He knows where his prize is hiding. 

He will find him, and then he will undo what has been done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, thank you so much for your patience on this! January is a bleurgh month and between some health stuff and just how much went into this chapter it's taken me loads longer then I planned to get this out. You guys are total stars and awesome readers, and I hope this continues to tickle your pickle! <3 <3 <3
> 
> If you haven't checked out the amazing moodboard for this by the most wonderful and epic dls you should! It's amazing and it's right here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21949270
> 
> Up next... the reunion!!


	7. Wish You Were Here

Six spends a long night in the woods.

At 5:15 (so his watch says), the big man with the mustache leaves the police station and gets in his truck.

He is going to Seven - Six knows this, as sure as he knows his name.

Even if he wasn't sure, he has no other option. It's his best chance. The man was lying before when he said he didn't know anything, hadn't seen anything. He must have talked to the kids about Six, about any unusual incidents. It's the only explanation. 

He knows.

It doesn't make what Six has to do any easier.

He follows the Sheriff's truck as far as he can, running down streets, through yards, over fences, his physical superiority and training taking over. Once the man turns off a particular road, however, Six loses track of him. 

He's lucky, though. The road only goes one way.

Into the woods.

He allows himself to slow down finally, pacing himself as he trudges on. He wishes idly that he'd taken more crackers from Max's kitchen before he left, thinks longingly of yesterday's pizza.

It's no wonder Seven was so reluctant to come back last time, especially if they gave him pizza. Or donuts. They don't have food like that at the Lab.

Because he is alone and it's getting dark and he's trying to distract himself from the noises and eeriness and cold surrounding him as he walks deeper and deeper into the forest, he allows himself to daydream about the future. About finally completing his mission and taking Seven back home to the Lab.

The Lab.

It's warm at the Lab; or, at least the temperature is kept within the same five-degree range. He doesn't like the clothes there as much as the ones he gets to wear outside, but they are always clean and neatly folded. The meals - never pizza - are delivered regularly. There is routine. Rules. Order. Papa. The Techs.

All the familiar things.

Things that must now balance out the new wonders he's experienced, the things he's seen, the friends he's made.

(They don't, of course - these aspects of his old life could never compare to what he has felt and seen and been these last few days. But, then again, they also aren't the real reason why he always goes back to the Lab.)

He has his room that he shares with Seven, and his bed that he shares with Seven. He has the stuffed bear that magically materialized one day, the one Seven called a gift. The picture Seven drew, the one that they were allowed to keep as a kind of reward. 

And Seven is there. In his head, Seven is there.

Beautiful and warm and soft and welcoming.

No.

No, not...

Not welcoming.

Seven won't be welcoming after Six brings him back. Won't be soft and pliant and yielding. Not for a while.

Not for a long time, maybe.

There is always a period, a stretch of time after incidents like these when Seven is... when he...

Six doesn't like to think that it is hate. It can't be. They have been together, in love, always. It is too strange, the idea that Seven could truly hate him. It's so ludicrous that Six dismisses it as a possibility almost immediately, pushing it to the back of his mind.

(Seven begs. He sobs and he _begs_...)

He understands that Seven hates the things Six is sometimes forced to do. He knows that Seven hates Papa and the Techs and the Lab. He knows he hates the life they lead in those cold hallways.

But Seven couldn't hate Six. Not really.

(He begs... _please, Six..._)

It can't be that, can't be hate, because Seven always forgives Six for the horrible things he does. He forgives him every time. Eventually, and reluctantly, and always with that edge of bitter disappointment.

He does forgive him, though.

That means he loves him, and that's all that matters. Doubting Seven's love is like doubting that tomorrow will come. 

(_I'm sorry..._)

Sometimes Seven turns away. After he has disobeyed or tried to escape or done something for which he must be punished, he turns away from Six for a bit.

He won't speak or laugh or let Six touch him. He won't even cry. He won't eat and Six isn't sure he even sleeps. He'll just close his eyes and slip into the world in his head.

There is no reaching him, then. 

It's the worst thing.

Six tries. He coaxes. He begs. He threatens. He comes as close as he ever has to striking Seven in anger - just so Seven will look at him and see him, acknowledge his existence, let him in. 

Seven never does. Not until he's ready.

And then he seems to pull himself out of it, slowly, like a small animal trying to free itself from a pit of thick, black tar.

Then it's small words, pettish and argumentative. A wry, unhappy twist of the mouth. He eats a little. He laughs shyly before cutting the sound off, irritated with himself - but Six still hears it, still hoards the sound, still cherishes every precious sign of life he can get.

Seven gets better. Eventually.

So he doesn't hate Six.

No... if he hated him, he wouldn't laugh, shyly. He wouldn't be coaxed into eating or sleeping. He wouldn't care that Six struggles with Brenner's tests or suffers punishments at the hands of the Techs. His gaze wouldn't soften, gradually, with pity and concern. He wouldn't reach out and comfort him.

He doesn't hate Six.

But he won't be welcoming, either. Not at first. Not right away when they get back.

Seven was so upset last time. Six understands better now - he'd lost the kids when Six brought him back last time, and those kids are special. Important and precious. No wonder he was so defiant. 

It's not Six's fault Seven couldn't stay with them - it isn't, not really, not _really_ (even though Seven had begged and begged and cried and broken, shattered right in front of Six while Six ached, helpless, unable to comfort him, unable to change the parameters of his _mission_) - but he'd taken the brunt of Seven's despair anyway. It stretched on and on like a never-ending road, a dark woods.

Seven had still been sulking, silent and sad, when Six unwittingly set this new series of events in motion. It took Six killing two Techs to jolt the other boy out of his depression and force him to look at Six with gentleness again.

Six had paid for it, too. He'd been so horrendously punished by Papa that the memories still burn in his brain when he closes his eyes, phantom pain shooting through his limbs.

It had been heaven and hell all mixed together for those few precious days before the beginning of the end. Terrible, because it hurt so badly - hurt on a level that was profound, almost molecular - but wonderful, too, because Seven was finally _awake_ again, was finally getting back to his old self. He was caring for Six, soothing him and singing to him and touching him gently, his hands and face and hair. 

Seven loved him again, until...

_Six, please... Papa, please, stop...!_

_I'm sorry..._

_Move. Help him. You have to move, he's hurting him, he's hurting Seven, you need to..._

Six brushes his hand across his face as if that will make the memory of that day vanish. It doesn't, of course. One thought just leads to another, and another.

Brenner will want to punish Seven severely this time. Seven will have to go back in the Bathtub. Among other things...

And...

_Papa, please... please..._

In his nightmares he doesn't dwell on his own pain. In his nightmares he hears Seven screaming. In his nightmares he is frozen by Brenner's gaze, trapped and immobile. He begs - they both do - but he can't move.

_Move. Help him. _

_He's hurting Seven. You're supposed to protect Seven._

_Obey Papa._

_Why can't you move...??_

_Protect. _

_Obey._

He can't help Seven. He can't save him. He can't go back in time and fix his mistakes.

And he has made so many mistakes.

He tries to push these thoughts away as he wanders through the woods, but it is difficult. In the darkness he can't see anything but Seven's tearful face, pleading, desperately asking him for help.

He has no distractions to prevent him from reliving those terrible moments - he can feel the invisible weight of Brenner's stare, the crippling fear that ran through his limbs as sure as if Papa had shocked him with the ankle band.

Fear. Terror. The knowledge that if he moved, if he spoke, if he even looked away, he would be giving Papa license to tip them all over the precipice of his insane cruelty. He feared, and still fears, the predictable unpredictability of Brenner - his capacity for destruction and devastation, and his willingness to cause limitless pain. 

Six thinks that he should kill Williams next time he sees him. He killed McCormick and Johnson... he could kill Williams, too. Maybe it would make Seven feel better - safer - if the man who touched him was dead. It would maybe make Six feel better, too.

Except that it wouldn't. Six knows this. He's not stupid. There are always more Williams', more Johnsons, more McCormicks. Techs multiply spontaneously in the cold hallways of the Lab - kill one and two more spring up. They aren't the problem.

_There is no problem._

_No problem he can fix, anyway._

It is good he has time to consider this, in a way. He needs to think, because everything is changing. He needs to accept the fact that things are different now.

Now Seven has experienced the outside world. Now Seven has powers in his own right- extraordinary powers that challenge Six physically and also threaten the artificial reality imposed by Papa and supported by Six.

The ways from before, the old techniques and strategies he came up with to ensure that nothing ever changed - they aren't going to be enough now to keep Seven with him.

And they won't survive this if Seven keeps fighting him, keeps running. Neither of them will. Sooner or later it will be too much - they will hurt each other, or Papa's punishments will shatter them to pieces. They will break apart and there will be no piecing them back together.

Too much power... too much need.

Six needs to come up with a new solution, a new and foolproof way to bind Seven to him.

He's not enough as Six, it seems. It's been Six and Seven, sequential, for the longest time, but this time it will be harder, much harder, to settle Seven and gentle him and convince him that submitting is better, is less painful than fighting. Seven will need new reasons to get out of bed, now. He'll need new reasons to keep breathing even when dying seems easier.

This means Six will need to be more.

He can be more for Seven. He's already willing to die, to kill for him, so being someone or something else for him is nothing, really. Maybe he can be Billy for a bit. It won't erase what he did (what he didn't do), but maybe he can pretend a bit. He can play-act and puff himself up and give Seven a little bit of the outside world by being Billy... when it's just them, when they're alone. When Seven needs more.

Seven should have more. Seven deserves more.

_I should never have let Williams touch him. _

_Why couldn't I help him?_

The kids had looked up at Billy with trust and affection. Billy wears leather and eats donuts and says 'baby' and 'sweetheart' in the California sunshine.

Papa had looked down at Six like he was nothing. When he did, Six froze like a broken thing, panic and fear and the paralyzing force of remembered pain, of the dreadful knowledge of the consequences to come undermining every one of his protective urges. He'd been utterly powerless in the face of that stare.

Seven always used to complain about his name, about how it didn't feel right, didn't fit him right. Like clothes that were too small. Six never thought about it before (never wanted to think about it), but now it feels true. 

Billy would never have let Seven down the way Six had. Billy would never have been crippled by the warning, the promise in Papa's voice. Billy would never have forgotten that he loves Seven more then he fears Brenner.

He loves Seven. So much.

He can be Billy for a while.

"I've looked everywhere, kid," Hopper says, sighing deeply and cracking open a beer. "He's not there. No sign of him anywhere... I even went to the kids' houses individually and talked to their parents. Nobody's seen anyone matching his description."

"He's good at hiding," Steve admits, worry filling his voice. "The children are also good at hiding things. Will has a castle in the woods."

"Yeah, I checked that, too. Nothing. But even if they are hiding him, somehow - and that's a big 'if' - if they're doing it willingly I would guess that means he hasn't hurt them? Or hasn't tried to?"

Steve sighs. Maybe. If only he could see that far ahead.

He'd had a nap after his little physical test of his own autonomy. He'd dreamed.

He'd dreamed of a man with no face. Six was there, and Brenner too, and Steve had dreamed up an ending for them, a way for all the pieces to fall together... but the man who was at the center of all this had no face. Steve couldn't see anything else. There are pieces on the board moving and he can't follow them in his mind. 

Not useful at all. One possible ending out of millions. He can only move the pieces around so much, and the man with no face, the secret cog in the machine, is hampering his ability to understand.

But he can feel the wheels turning. He can see that something is there, on the horizon, just beyond his line of sight.

It's Six, he thinks. It has to be him. Who else could it be?

"We'll need a plan," Eleven pipes up. "Whatever Steve saw, Papa won't stay away forever. If we haven't seen the people from the Lab it's only..."

"...A matter of time," Hopper finished grimly, taking a slug of his beer and scowling.

Steve likes that phrase. It's a new one, and very fitting for his life and abilities. He sees everything that has happened and will happen, but all jumbled and confused and out of order. Only with patience do things become a sequences of events, a chain of cause and effect. For him, everything is only a matter of _time_.

"I have a plan," Steve says.

This is part lie, part truth. He has half of a plan. He's preparing as best he can. He can try to make sure that El and Hopper are safe. He can try - _try_ \- to fix this. 

But he knows, because he can see the ever-changing ripples of the future, that in the end he will have to let invisible forces carry him on like the tide.

"I have a plan. You're not going to like it," he tells Hopper as an afterthought. This statement completely true.

Hopper groans.

The kids troop quietly into Will's room. Lucas shuts the door behind them while Will takes out an old shoe box from under the bed and opens it. He rifles through the contents and then pulls out a drawing. It is carefully folded, carefully preserved. It is proof of a miracle that came into their lives, stayed for a time, and then disappeared one day without a trace.

He unfolds the paper and lifts it up to show the others. They all study it for a long moment.

"Yeah," Mike says, finally. "I see it too. Yeah."

"Right?" Dustin nods. "I knew it."

"Can we really be sure?" asks Lucas.

"Trust me," says Will. "It's the same. His drawing style is too special to be anything else."

"Besides," Max interjects, "even if we're wrong, so what? We don't know where Si - Billy is. Either the people from the Lab have got him or he's run away on his own... maybe even found Steven. Hopper knows, one way or another, and if he doesn't then we make up some story and motor before he figures it out."

"Does anyone know how to get to his cabin?"

Will nods. "Mom took me there a few times. We can follow the train tracks."

Williams returns from his mission. 

"Well?" Brenner asks as the man steps into his office, shutting the door behind him. He is asking whether the Tech managed to find and intimidate Experiment Six into committing to a significant course of action.

"It's done. He's on the move. I confirmed it visually myself - he's left the children and is tracking another lead. Johnson is monitoring his progress as we speak."

"You've activated the tracker?"

"Yes."

Williams' voice is uncharacteristically brusque, even for such a fraught situation. Brenner raises an eyebrow, somewhat concerned that the Tech seems to have completely forgotten proper procedures when he never has before.

Williams stalls for a moment and then remembers what Brenner is non-verbally reminding him to do. He takes his wallet from his back pocket and places it on Brenner's desk, huffing with something that might be irritation or might be something else entirely.

Brenner takes the wallet and puts it in the top drawer of his desk. He then closes and locks the drawer, pocketing the key afterwards.

"What's on your mind?" the older man asks when he's done.

Despite Brenner's decidedly flat tone, the Tech does not seem to need further encouragement.

"They've never been out unsupervised this long before," Williams says, twitching slightly. "It's been a full week and we haven't seen anything of Seven. Also, I'm worried about Six. Even with all his other missions, he's never been allowed this level of unsupervised civilian interaction. He's emotionally compromised. "

He's not the only one, Brenner thinks. He doesn't say this out loud. He merely echoes the most pertinent word.

"Compromised?"

"When I saw Six... he seemed too close to that group from before," Williams continues. "The children. The ones that were protecting Seven last time."

"Interesting."

"And Seven..."

"...Has demonstrated a much higher level of resolve than anticipated," the older man interrupts. "He may be dead, yes... but I have a feeling he will surprise us. He has a power, a capacity for destruction the likes of which I have rarely seen. The accident in the Bathtub was just a taste."

Brenner's eyes go distant, cloudy with greed.

He understands, of course, what Williams is saying. It is deeply unfortunate that they have not been able to control the full extent of Six and Seven's exposure to the outside world in light of these recent escape attempts. We are all, perhaps, slaves to the requirements of any given situation. Sending Six out after Seven was a calculated risk.

But all these errors can be corrected. Time and patience and just a little bit of creativity can fix all things.

"We must get Seven back," Brenner continues. "He's the future. The future of this project, of this whole program. Possibly of the whole country. Everything depends upon this. There can be no more mistakes."

Yes, mistakes, Williams thinks with a kind of frustrated despair. It was a mistake, wasn't it? Only the real mistake is not the thing Brenner is talking about.

"There are ways of dealing with subversive tendencies brought on by too much exposure to outside influences," Brenner calmly reminds him, as if such a reminder is necessary. "And if the usual ways or treatments don't do the trick... well, as you said, they are both emotionally compromised. That would be simple enough to use to our advantage."

Brenner looks up at Williams and gives him a ghost of a smile.

"There are five to choose from, after all," he says. "As we know, one lost child is hardly the end of the world."

Six is lost - the wheel turns - he is found again.

He finds _him_ again.

He is so tired... he curls up under a tree. His watch says 3:37. It is so dark in the woods he can barely see his hand in front of his face.

He wakes up at dawn. He wakes up and sees, in the middle distance, a small wood cabin with a sagging front porch. There is a familiar truck parked in front of it. 

Like it was there all along, just waiting for him to see it. 

For a long time Six is too stiff and tired and confused and frightened to move. He stares at the cabin as the weak sunlight creeps up in the sky. He watches the structure slowly come to life. 

Even from here he can hear things happening inside. Lights go on and off. There is a clatter. Food smells. Faint laughter.

Familiar laughter.

Six watches. He waits. He can barely breathe.

The front door opens and Six, in spite of all his instincts firing off at once, knows better than to charge forward. Instead, he slips behind his tree, eyes still unshakably fixed on the cabin's entrance.

The big man comes out. He is not wearing his uniform - he's bundled up in a warm jacket that Six, in this moment, envies. A young thing, a small girl, flies out from behind him, laughing and running. He yells good-naturedly after her as she takes off into the forest.

El, he calls her. Slow down, El.

The big man smiles slightly before turning to address someone still in the cabin. 

The mysterious someone answers, words Six can't make out, and then he steps out onto the porch.

The air leaves Six's lungs.

_Seven._

_Home_ is the first word, the first thought in Six's head. It is raw, visceral, an almost-violent feeling rather than a true and rational thought. It sinks in him and elevates him, warms and chills him.

It is Seven. Six is _home_.

The second thought that enters Six's mind is that Seven looks different. It is still unmistakably him, but at the same time he has certainly changed. He is not like he was the last time Six saw him, pale and frightened and desperate as he was led away to the Bathtub.

It's only been a few days. Not much could possibly change in so little time, but...

He is wearing different clothes for a start. He is wrapped up in flannel shirts and a too-big sweater. They should swamp him, but instead they suit him somehow. Like they're protection, a comforting kind of armor. Six has never seen him in these colors before.

His hair is still slightly mussed from sleep, as long and fluffy as it always is. A few loose strands hang in his eyes and he brushes them away - a breathtakingly familiar gesture that jars Six.

Perhaps it's the way he is holding himself that's the real change. There used to be this semi-permanent tension in his shoulders - it's not gone entirely, but it has eased significantly. Seven slouches, relaxed and confident. His arms are wrapped around his chest, but it seems more like a defense against the wind, not a sign of anxiety.

He looks up at the big man with wide eyes full of trust and smiles when Hopper leans over and gently tugs him into a loose embrace, kissing the top of his head.

Six shivers violently. It's not because he's cold.

The big man says something Six can't hear over the buzzing sound in his ears, and then he moves off the porch and follows the girl, El, into the woods. They are a little too far away for Six to light them on fire with his powers, but he considers it in passing. He is quickly distracted, however, by Seven moving again.

_Seven._

The boy tilts his head and looks up at the pink-blue sky, the oranges of the rising sun. Six realizes that he can count on one hand all the times he's seen Seven outside of the Lab... seen the daylight in his hair, reflected in his eyes, catching gold threads in the warm brown. For all the many days and months and years he has known and lived with and loved Seven, he has never seen him quite like this before.

He's never seen him free.

Seven's mouth twitches up in a small smile and he takes a deep breath of fresh air, smelling trees and soil and life. 

He makes his way down the two sagging front steps and moves with some purpose towards a nearby tree. He reaches out one pale, slender hand and touches the rough bark before turning and sliding down to the ground to sit, leaning against the thick trunk.

He is facing the sun. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, enjoying the morning.

Six's mind whirls as he steps closer. His eyes dart towards the two others but they are out of sight and safely away. His feet carry him forward without a conscious thought. All his soul is bent now towards a singular goal.

He knows, in a distant, abstract way, that he needs to be careful. He needs to be smart. He should try being Billy. Maybe Seven will be less scared of him and what he is going to do if he is Billy.

Six is a little afraid of what Seven might do, too. He's only seen the full extent of his power up close once, and he saw the aftermath of the other incident, the wreckage of the Bathtub - it's still enough to make him wary.

He is less concerned about that, however, and more worried about how Seven will see him now. 

If he will look up at Six with hatred and disdain.

The awful thing happened. The worst thing. A breaking, tearing, terrible thing. It happened to Seven and Six had been unable to help him.

Six didn't... couldn't stop it, not even when Seven begged.

And Seven is different now.

As he walks, quietly and carefully, Six puts an added bit of swagger in his step. He straightens, then slouches slightly, then grins a little, then lets out a quiet huff. He focuses. He has never been more awake than he is right now.

_Be what Seven wants. Be Billy._ _Bring him home._

Seven doesn't hear him until Billy is already there, already crouching down in front of him. Billy’s hand slides over Seven’s beautiful mouth, gentle at first before clamping down firmly. Seven’s eyes fly open, wide and scared at being woken this way, and he blinks up in confusion and dawning dread as he sees who is touching him.

“Pretty,” Billy whispers, shaken to his core at being this close to his lover again.

They are both trembling, but for very different reasons.

There is fear in the other boy’s face, and he begins to struggle against his grip.

Billy hates it.

“Shhhh…” he tries to gentle Seven using a soft, familiar tone of voice. “I’ve got you. It’s over now, pretty. It’s over.”

Seven lets out a panicked ‘meuph’ noise and Billy presses down harder, glances over to the side where the man and the girl have disappeared behind the cabin. He turns back and glares meaningfully at Seven, communicating his intentions.

Of course, Seven understands immediately, and his eyes grow impossibly wider. He stills, though... enough that Billy feels safe easing his hand off his mouth.

“Seven...” he murmurs.

“No,” Seven responds, shaking his head. “No. I’m Steve. I’m Steve. Please...”

It takes a moment, but quickly enough Billy recognizes the name Seven is claiming.

Steve. A diminutive of Steven, the name the kids gave him.

A _nickname_.

Billy – _Six_ – feels a twisted rush of emotions, a strange combination of bitterness and envy and vindication and cynicism and rage. It eats away at his insides like acid.

Seven finally got his nickname, then. A coded moniker, a sign that someone feels affection for him.

Someone besides Six.

Ugly thoughts are clearly playing across his face where Seven can see them because the other boy flinches and presses himself back against the tree. Six isn’t having it, though, and he surges forward, gripping onto Seven’s hair tightly, preventing any further escape attempts.

He remembers himself almost instantly and relaxes his grip – still firm enough to keep the boy from moving away but not enough to hurt.

“We’re going,” he says, voice rough with emotion. “Come on.”

“No,” Seven shakes his head, twists against Six’s grip. “Six, please… I don’t want to go back.”

“You have to. Come on.”

“No… Six… please, I’m alright. I’m safe, I don’t need…”

Six shushes him, his free hand twitching up, ready to silence him if need be.

“You know,” he murmurs, a desperate edge creeping into the authoritative tone of his voice. “You know you can’t stay. Don’t make this harder. We’ll go back and then… then I’ll take care of you. Just like before. Just like always. I’ll always take care of you, Seven…”

“Steve. I’m Steve.”

“No,” Six shakes his head. “No. _Seven_. Just like before, okay? Just like before.”

“Six… don’t…”

“I’ll hurt them,” Six says, his voice steely and cold. “If you make me. I’ll do it.”

The other boy goes quiet then. He goes incredibly, impossibly still.

“You know,” Six whispers and he can see in Seven’s expression that yes… yes, he knows.

He knows.

Seven’s eyes – not Steve... Steve is a different person, a different world, and so is Billy, so is all of this – Seven’s eyes do something tragic then. They kind of crinkle, glaze over, go sad.

Disappointed.

It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.

Six very desperately doesn’t want to care.

He is not a person who feels regret often, but… and besides, it shouldn’t make any difference. None at all.

If he needs to hurt Seven to save him…

He drags in a deep breath, forces it into unwilling lungs and forces it out again.

“Come on. Time to go.”

Seven takes in a shaky breath of his own, with a miserable sort of courage that breaks Six’s heart in two. He pushes himself back and up, trembling legs lifting him up off the ground as he uses the tree behind him for support. Compliant at last, in spite of his reluctance.

His eyes never leave Six's as they well up with angry, miserable tears. Six follows, mirrors his every move until they are both in a standing position, still close, still trapped in their strange dance.

Seven blinks at Six, gaze bravely defiant, accusatory. Six hates it, but then again, he is very used to living with things that he hates.

Then, all at once, Seven is shaking his head… backing up and shaking his head. His eyes are glued onto something over Six’s shoulder.

There is a burst of light behind Six’s eyes and then nothing.

Six wakes up in a bedroom. He's cuffed to a folding metal chair and his ankle band is gone. His head hurts but the pain is already fading.

"I brought you some medicine if it still hurts," a familiar voice offers as he blinks and drags himself back into consciousness. "Your head, I mean. It got hit really hard. Normal pills don't work as well with us because of what we are, but it's better than nothing. It helped with my ankle. I smashed it getting the band off and the medicine helped me sleep."

Six's head lolls forward and he blearily studies his own legs, sees that in fact - yes, Brenner's chain, the thin, immovable circle of metal with its blinking red light is gone now. The absence of the band on his own ankle is a staggering feeling. He has the almost overwhelming urge to run his fingers over the now-exposed line of pale skin, but he can't because his hands are tied behind him.

"I know. It feels so strange. Sometimes I forget it's gone and I panic. I've been bunching up my socks around my ankles just to keep from scaring myself."

Weird.

"Get out of my head," Six murmurs, voice rough and a little slurred. "Don't. You never used to do that to me. Get out."

"Sorry," says the voice. "Didn't mean to. You're thinking kind of loud."

"Meuph..."

"I'm trusting you. Don't set fire to the cabin, please. Or any of my friends. I know you don't always need to be looking at things to be able to burn them... but I'm asking you not to. Please. And Hopper used his handcuffs instead of rope so you can't burn through that."

"How?" Six finally manages to ask. Seven understands that he means _\- how did you sneak up on me? How did you get the band off me without breaking my leg? How did you make it this long out here without me finding you? _

_How... everything?_

"I have a plan," Seven replies, sounding far too pleased with himself. "And Hopper had a screwdriver for the ankle band. He's in the kitchen taking it apart. He wanted to see how it works."

"They weren't behind me," Six says. It feels important to say this for some reason. His head hurts. "The other two. Your... friends. I would have heard them. I wouldn't have made a mistake."

"No, you wouldn't have. You didn't." Seven's voice is full of understanding - he knows that this is important to Six, that he would be troubled by the possibility of making a mistake, that this would be the thing that would worry him most.

The knowing tone in Seven's voice makes Six slightly ill even as it comforts him.

"They were far enough away. El used her powers. She threw something at you. I didn't want her to pick something that big but she was scared you would hurt me so she threw a log at you."

"El?"

"Eleven."

"Eleven?" Six echos. He blinks dumbly, processing this, and then sucks in a breath.

"Oh."

The word sounds so small in light of the massive revelation it is... but it makes sense. Six knows about the Number who ran away and never came back. It explains a lot. Seven nods, eyes bright, a small grin twitching his mouth up.

"Yes," he affirms.

Six narrows his eyes and finally forces himself to focus on his wayward lover. He is sitting on the edge of a bed with a bright, knitted blanket neatly folded on top of it, his elbows on his knees, looking at where Six is tied to the chair.

He looks a little more tired now then he did when Six first saw him, but no less beautiful. In this light Six can see the shadows under his eyes that haven't quite faded, can count the moles that decorate pale skin. He can fall into honey-brown eyes.

_I've been so scared, _Six thinks, loudly. _I thought I'd never see you again_.

Seven's faint smile disappears and his eyes go sad. He looks away for a moment, lets out a small sigh, swallows down his pain. He chooses not to acknowledge the thought Six leaves unspoken, the heartache left unacknowledged between them.

Instead, he deftly weaves and dances around the issue.

"I guess I shouldn't be telling you this," he says, "but it doesn't matter. She's safe. Eleven. Hopper will protect her if Brenner comes looking, but he won't come looking. He doesn't know she's here. He won't find out unless you tell him."

"You need to come with me, Seven." Six feels no such need to obfuscate. He can't help the slight growl that slips into his voice, knows it's stupid to try to posture when he's stuck in this chair. Still - old habits, old instincts.

For Six, there is nothing but the mission - _this_ mission, the mission that begins and ends with Seven - always.

"Of course, she's so strong," the other boy continues, undaunted. "She'll end up protecting Hopper before it's all over. They'll help each other. You better have left my children alone, Six. You better not have hurt them. If you've hurt..."

"They're fine," Six snaps. "They'll stay fine as long as you do what Papa wants."

"I don't know, Six. We should compromise, I think. You know that word? C-o-m-promise. It's like half-way happy."

"Seven..."

"I like that 'promise' is in that word. So many promises. Everyone makes promises all the time and no one is happy. You promise something good and it turns into something bad. Half-way."

"What are you doing? What are you saying?" Six shakes his head, struggling to keep up. "This isn't you."

"You don't know me. I'm not Seven... I'm Steve, and you don't know me at all. You lied to me about everything. You and Papa... you lied this whole time."

Six opens his mouth to deny it, hurt and confused, but Seven cuts him off before he can.

"You told me everything about the world outside the lab was bad. You told me you'd protect me. You told me you lo... loved me..."

"I do!"

"Love doesn't mean taking me back to Papa! It doesn't mean telling me you'll hurt the kids!"

"I love you, Seven..."

"It's Steve! And love doesn't mean taking me back to where the Techs can... can...!"

“Who takes care of you?” Six interrupts.

Seven blinks at that. "What?"

"Who. Takes. Care. Of. You?" Six enunciates. He glares at the other boy, who blushes and shifts his gaze away. "You need someone to take care of you - you always needed that. It's me. I do. I love you, I take care of you. I always have."

Seven huffs and shakes his head stubbornly, stewing in his frustration.

“Hopper does now. He and Eleven found me. It’s their cabin.”

Six growls. “Does he hold you? Does he feed you? Does he get you out of bed and dressed in the morning? Does he keep the bad men away? Do you run crying to him when you have nightmares?”

Seven’s mouth twists down and he raises his eyes to meet Six's, defiant. “It’s not...," he stammers, trying to find the words. "It's not the way you mean... you're making it sound like...”

“Does he touch you?”

The question is meant to come out accusatory, but the inescapable edge of misery in it takes away much of the bite. Six wishes he could take the question back, or at least say it differently, try to mitigate the hurt that he knows is coming his way - but he can't.

It's out now. What's worse, he knows what the answer is.

Seven shakes his head again and Six feels a surge of anger at the denial.

“I saw him touch you.” Six scrambles for the damning word and finds it, the one he learned from the Techs, from Williams and McCormick and Scott, the one he heard again on the TV.

The one that means faithless.

“Whore.”

Seven remains quiet. Six isn’t sure Seven knows what a whore is, suddenly, but his tone and the sentiment behind it is not at all ambiguous.

“Does he make you feel good?” he asks finally, unable to hold the silence, defeated but desperate to know. “Does he touch your hair? Does he kiss your neck and your chest like I do? Does he hold you through your orgasms like I do… hold you close when you’re shaking and crying? Is… is he good to you, Seven?”

Six is angry, so angry, and so hurt… but it would almost be okay if Seven said 'yes'. Yes, he does all those things. Yes, he's good to me. As long as the big man is good to Seven, it would almost be okay. He’s powerless to change it, so… it would have to be almost okay.

“No,” Seven says softly. He pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around his legs. It’s such a ‘Seven’ thing to do and the sight sends a pang through Six’s heart.

“I was confused, too. I thought there was only one way of touching. But he doesn’t touch me like that. He rubs my head and squeezes my shoulders and hugs me. Once, when I couldn’t breathe, he held my hands until I could. He doesn’t kiss me anywhere except the top of my head, and then only sometimes. He doesn’t touch my penis. He doesn’t touch my hole. He doesn’t put his hands or his mouth on me like that. He has never fucked me, and I have never fucked him."

Six huffs, but Seven just glares back at him.

“It’s nothing like it was with you," he says. "You’re different."

Something about the way Seven says 'different' feels special. It feels like something the two of them can cling to. The word floats between them, hovering like a bubble, and both of them are conscious of its meaning and its fragility. After a brief pause Seven continues, quiet and thoughtful.

"He doesn’t take care of me the way you took care of me, and… I don’t need him to. You took care of me because in that place, in the Lab, I needed you to. Now I take care of myself. I get myself out of bed. I feed myself with food from the kitchen when I’m hungry. I’m not sad all the time because… because I’m not in the bad place anymore. When I want to have an orgasm, I touch myself. I think about you fucking me and I touch myself until I have one.”

Six shudders. He very nearly drowns in the image of Seven taking his cock in his hands and pleasuring himself to the memory of their lovemaking. It's a heady idea. Seven feels what Six feels - it's still there, but...

But he can’t escape what that means.

“So… you don’t need me," Six says after a long, terrible silence. It feels like the acknowledgment is being forcibly ripped from his throat. "That's all? You won't come back. You don’t need me. You take care of yourself now.”

Seven looks at him and then, like a tiny, beautiful miracle, a small smile lifts the corners of his mouth.

“I’m Steve. I take care of myself now.”

It hurts terribly. There is no denying this. Six feels just as he would if Seven - Steve - had come up to him and punched him in the gut.

It is also not a surprise. Not really.

They never really addressed the issue before now, but it's always been there. They didn't get a chance the last time Seven was dragged back. Six had always silenced Seven before when it came up - an old argument that never goes anywhere, a familiar desire that remains buried because it can never be satisfied.

A boy who will not be tamed.

It is a shock to realize - and he hasn't accepted it, not by a long shot, although the pieces are all there and glaringly obvious - how much of himself is tied up in Seven. How much of what Six says and does and _is_ comes back to this point.

It's something beyond Brenner, beyond his missions - those are just games, really. A means to an end. This is the only real thing, and it is beyond the far reaches of his understanding of pain and loss to think that...

He feels like he is slowly being erased. 

He's nothing if there is no Seven. That's a strange, unacknowledged fact of his life.

But at the same time, he can't be... he isn't _nothing..._

He still _wants..._

A simple problem, then, with a simple solution. Just a mathematical equation, after all.

_If I bring him back, I can take care of him again. He’ll need me again. I just need to bring him back._

“You had your driver’s license in your pocket,” Steve says, unaware of the thoughts tumbling through Six's head. “You go by William Hargrove now?”

“Billy,” Six corrects automatically.

“A nickname,” Steve says, mouth twitching up at the corners. As much as Six wants to hate him, to be angry and resentful, he can’t resist that familiar twitch of the mouth. This boy holds so much power over him and and it is the best and worst thing.

“An alias,” Six snaps, irritation coloring his tone.

“Al… alias?”

“It means fake. False. It’s a lie. I’m…”

“What do you want me to call you, then?”

“I don’t know." Frustration rises. "I don’t care. It doesn’t matter…”

“Of course it matters.”

“No!” Six roars and Steve flinches. “It doesn’t matter! Seven or Steven, Six or Billy… they’re just names! They were only stupid names! They don’t mean ‘us’. It’s you and me. You and me! Us! Only us!”

There’s a loud ‘thunk’ in the other room and a flurry of frantic movement.

“Steve?” the big man calls from down the hall. He doesn’t come in, doesn’t take Steve away, but the boy responds immediately anyway, turns his head quickly and yells back.

“I’m okay!”

Just like that, the flair of rage dies again in Six, and he feels a perverse sense of gratitude that Steve or Seven isn’t leaving and that the big man isn’t coming in. The comedown is disconcerting, almost dizzying, and a huff that is more like a whimper escapes him.

It will do no good to yell. Isn’t that what Papa always said? Yelling and crying and stomping your feet and setting fire to Techs and acting out does no good.

The power you have is limited… controlled… and you mustn’t carry on so, Six… you mustn’t be so childish.

You mustn’t pine for Seven. It does no good.

If you want him...

You know what you have to do.

“If you come back," he says softly, "I can take care of you. If you let me go, I can love you again like before. It can all go back to the way it was. Don't you want that, Seven?”

“It can’t be like before. Everything is different. It has been for a while. Even before I ran away.”

Six huffs a miserable sound between a laugh and a sob because he knows that Steve is right.

"You were happy," he insists anyway. He clings to this idea. "We were happy. You know we were."

"I thought we were," Steve admits, his voice gentle even those his words are so hard to accept. "Half-way happy, maybe. I love you, I do... even when I hate you. I can... I know that. I'm not saying I don't love you. But it... it wasn’t good, Six. You were the only good thing about that place for me.”

“It was as good as it was going to be. There’s nothing better for us.”

“There is. We can be free, Six.”

“No. The world… it’s bad, Seven. You say I've lied, but I haven't. I know I haven't. You haven’t gone on missions, you don’t know. You found someone to take care of you here, but it isn’t like this anywhere else. Nobody takes care of you out there. They all want to hurt you or use you somehow. You’re just a toy for them. And what are you going to do when the big man doesn’t want you anymore? What are you going to do when he dies or leaves you?”

Steve lets out a pained breath and Six continues, eyes sharp, sensing an old familiar weakness to be exploited.

“I’d never leave you," he says vehemently. "Never. That man just feels sorry for you, or he’s got some other plan for you. He’ll go away once he realizes you can’t do anything for him. I won’t. I just want you to be with me. I just want you, Seven... just you. You and me.”

“But… I can do things.”

Six resists the urge to role his eyes. “Sure. You can make yourself food. I mean other things… you know what I mean…”

“Six...”

Six shakes his head but Steve doesn't stop.

“The dreams, Six. They weren’t dreams. You and Papa told me they weren't real..."

"You were hurt. You screamed in your sleep. I didn't think they were real," Six interrupts, sounding strangely broken, aware that he is at least partially at fault in this specific instance.

"I see things before they happen. I can see…” Steve’s eyes glaze over slightly, and his mouth twists up. “…It’s all connected. I saw them. And I saw you."

Six blinks at that, stymied.

“I saw you die. I saw Hopper die. I saw the kids die. I saw Papa die. I saw myself die. I saw us all live and suffer and die a hundred different ways, in a hundred different worlds. And you told me that didn't mean anything. You told me I was wrong. Papa said I was wrong, wrong, wrong, and you said so too... and Hopper and El don't say that to me. They don't think there's something wrong with me.”

"You're not wrong," Six chokes out. "Not like you mean. I never meant to say... to make you feel like you were..."

"But you did, Six," Steve says, and it's the truth - Six cannot deny it. "You made me feel wrong because you didn't want me to leave you."

"I thought the dreams... Seven, I love you. I love you. You're my husband. There's no 'me' without you. I love you. Please..."

"I know." Steve is crying now - silently and softly, but still crying. "I know you do. But you can't love me and want me to be in that place. You can't love me and take me back to Papa. If you love me you have to let me go."

Six blinks up at him, his mouth, his eyes - his whole face a twisted mask of despair.

"I..." he starts, then stops. A tear, and echo of Steve's misery falling down his own cheek. "I don't know what else to... I don't know how to do that. I don't know how. Seven... I don't know _how._"

Steve - Seven looks at him for a long moment and then nods slowly. His cheeks are wet and his eyes are red, yet his mouth settles into an expression of sad resolve.

"I know that, too," he says, and Six can almost see the door close between them.

The facts are these. If Seven is free from Brenner, then Seven is also free from Six. If Seven is free to choose Six, out here in the world with all its myriad possibilities, then he is also free to leave Six if he wants.

If Six takes Seven back to the Lab, then Seven won’t have a choice. He’ll be upset for a very long time, no doubt. In the end, however, he won’t have a choice.

Seven needs love. He _needs_ love. He needs touch and gentleness, kisses and care. He needs someone to look at him like he’s special, like he has value, like he’s beautiful and sweet and perfect. He needs it, and if he is in the Lab then he will only be able to get it from Six.

He will accept Six’s love or suffer horribly - suffer the way those who need affection and are denied it always suffer. He will not have a third option.

Six won’t even need to do anything. It will just happen. Seven will break, will shatter to pieces in those cold rooms in the Lab, and when he does, he’ll come crawling back to Six’s arms, to Six’s bed. He will accept the affection Six offers because Six will be the only one in that place to offer it.

Six will put him back together again because no one else will.

He’ll mark the boy’s skin and run his hands through his hair and give him pleasure and keep him warm. Seven’s eyes will go dull and sad, but Six will ignite small sparks here and there, small signs of life. They will give each other tiny moments of almost-happiness. It will be enough because it has to be enough.

If he takes Seven back to the Lab, these things will happen.

If he takes him back.

**Then**

_Mornings always start the same way._

_The lights come on. There is no clock in their room, so they don’t know what time the lights flicker to life, still somehow cold and dim for all their brightness. It always feels like the same time of day, somehow. Six is the only one of the two of them who would know what to do with a clock anyway – they taught him how to tell time for his missions._

_And really, what difference would knowing the time make in a place like this? They control so very little about their days and nights._

_The lights come on and Six’s eyes snap open. He always wakes up quickly, efficiently. Seven, attached as he is to his dream-state, does not. He senses movement and shifts uneasily in half-sleep, but he never wakes fully until Six urges him up._

_Sometimes Seven has nightmares. On those nights he doesn’t get much rest and is particularly unwieldy in the morning. Six hates those nights for many reasons. The mornings after are the least of it._

_The lights flicker on. Their clothes are left out the night before so they can get dressed first thing._

_Shapeless tan shirt and shapeless tan pants. No pockets. No shoes. No adornments except the metal bands on their ankles, and that isn’t a decoration – that’s a chain._

_Six dresses first while Seven rolls around in their thin sheets, soaking up the remaining warmth. It only takes Six a minute to finish readying himself, but it is an extra minute of sleep he is glad to give Seven and that Seven is glad to receive._

_Some mornings are easier than others._

_Some mornings Seven wakes up from good dreams, content and hopeful. They don’t talk about the dreams (dreamers often lie) but Six can always tell when Seven has had one – his face is bright and soft, his eyes glowing with warmth as he looks up fondly at his lover._

_On those mornings it takes only a gentle nudge. Seven gets up and dresses himself, talks sweet love-rhymes to Six while he steels himself to face another day._

_Some mornings are harder. Much harder._

_When Seven has nightmares, he needs Six to reach over in the dark and wake him up, snap him out of it. If he screams too much the Techs will come, and if he gets physical with them there will be punishments. It’s Six’s responsibility to wake him before that happens._

_They don’t talk about those dreams either, but Seven is usually so frightened and horrified when he wakes that he is unable to fall asleep again after. He mumbles about faceless men standing over him in the dark, and Six has to promise again and again that he won't let anyone hurt him._

_He will never let anyone hurt him. _

_Six holds him until the lights come back on. On those mornings Seven is shaky, jittery, vague and exhausted._

_Some mornings can’t be blamed on dreams, on a lack of sleep. Some mornings Seven simply wakes up gray and dull, like a puppet without strings, like a thing drugged or half-dead. Some mornings Seven wakes up so very, very sad._

_This is one of those mornings._

_Six can see it when he looks over and Seven’s eyes are open, fixed on the door behind him, blank and unseeing. Six needs to pause and take a deep breath, prepare himself for this challenge. He hates it, but he can’t show weakness. To hesitate would be fatal._

_He walks over to Seven’s prone form and crouches down next to the bed._

_A kiss for Seven’s forehead, his cheek, his mouth. A small flicker of recognition but otherwise no movement from Seven._

_Six gently wraps his hands around the other boy’s arms and shifts him up, tugs him carefully into a sitting position. Moves his legs so they are positioned over the side of the bed._

_Another kiss on the cheek, a reward for being pliant and good._

_“Clothes,” Six says. He nudges Seven until they are both standing, and then Six dresses Seven carefully._

_“Right,” he says when Seven needs to move his right arm or right leg. “Left,” he says when Seven needs to move his left arm or leg._

_A kiss on the neck when they’re done, and Six runs his fingers through Seven’s hair in a repetitive petting motion. Seven shivers at the sensation and his eyes drift closed. He stands still, swaying slightly, and lets Six touch him, hold him gently._

_A reward. We are being good._

_The door opens and two trays of food are deposited on the floor by a disinterested Tech. The door closes again and Six settles Seven back into a sitting position on the bed._

_This is the hard part._

_Eating is always difficult on days like today. On these days Seven lacks the energy to do most things and showing any interest in food seems to take a lot of energy._

_Six breaks apart nutrition bars and feeds the pieces to Seven. He makes the boy take small sips of water, and he spoons oatmeal into his mouth._

_It is usually at this point, during this slow, painstaking attempt to give Seven the nourishment required for his survival, that Seven starts to cry. It is quiet and unobtrusive, like every soft and gentle feeling must be in this cruel place, but he cries all the same. All the bottomless misery has nowhere else to go - it rises and spills over like flood waters. _

_It is usually at this point that Six most wants to cry as well._

_He doesn’t cry, though. To cry would be to admit that Seven has a reason for feeling the way he does, and that sometimes Six, too, can’t shake the nagging feeling that they are trapped and suffocating in this place. To cry is to accept the possibility that this place is death, is hell._

_That cannot... that must not be. We must bury this. We do not look and we do not see. To see it is to accept it, and we must never do that._

_It's all over if we do that._

_Six would never admit it, not even to himself, but those moments frighten him terribly. He has an profound, unspoken fear that one day Seven may fall into this dark mood and never come out of it again._

_He has an profound, unspoken fear that one day he might, too._

** Now **

In the end it is not a choice. It never was.

Hopper removes the ankle band from Six's leg, but for all his subsequent tinkering he fails to fully disable the tracker carefully concealed within its complex circuitry. 

It takes less then an hour. The strike team descends upon the vulnerable cabin like a cloud of mythical furies.

There are two bangs like gunshots, the sound of yelling voices and a window smashing, and then the room Six and Seven are in fills up with smoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are the most spectacular readers of all! Let me know what you think or just feel free to say hey! <3
> 
> Also, if you haven't seen this amazing moodboard for this story, made by the most awesome dls, you should!! Do it! https://archiveofourown.org/works/21949270


	8. (I want to know) Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: I'll be square with you guys, this is the chapter where everything hits the fan. Some torture, trauma, heavy existential musings, very little comfort and it basically took me two months to write. 
> 
> Also, a cliffhanger ending, and the author has lost all sense of time and space and moral decency. If you're in the pandemic doldrums, I love you loads and am sending you all the hugs <3

Six is wrong, Steve thinks.

The present is not a place you can live in. It's not a stable thing you can cling to. You don't survive by being in the right-here, right-now and ignoring all the twisting paths that brought you here. You can't move forward that way. You can't move back.

If you want to live - not just survive but _live_, and isn't that sort of the real issue here? - you need to know who you are. You need to know how you got to this point. You can't keep fighting against the same old brick wall, against the enemies that exist in your head.

You need to move, need to change. If you are not living, you are dying.

The present is a stitched quilt of moments, of the past and the future, the now and the then. It is a breathing, transforming, growing thing.

A person is all the moments of their life - all happening at once.

So many different moments led to this.

**Now **

Steve can’t see Six – Billy, he thinks defiantly, holding onto the name like a powerful secret – or much of anything as he is dragged down the familiar hallways towards what he knows is his punishment.

They’d returned to the Lab quite quickly. It is amazing to Steve how fast they always return to the Lab after he is caught.

Every time before it had been the same. They - _Them_ with a capital 'T' - had a way of making the most horrific and complicated journey take mere minutes.

Perhaps the worst moments of Steve's life are these - these painful stretches in the back of some vehicle. The shock, the ice-cold feeling of failure, and then the complete and devastating loss of hope. All that pain, and yet for the Techs it was as simple as stuffing him into a van and driving him fifteen minutes down the road.

Taking him in the wrong, wrong, wrong direction.

It was almost like he hadn’t made it very far at all.

Almost like none of it had mattered in the slightest.

The gas had filled the small room in Hopper's cabin, disorienting and choking both himself and Billy. More shouting, more gunshots, a powerful zap with an over-sized taser.

Then hands again. More hands, always more hands, touch and grabbing and dragging him away. Laying claim to his body - taking his freedom away again.

He saw blood on the floor. He heard a scream and realized it was his own.

Then a bag over his head.

Blind. Blind.

Someone hits him in the face, and then he really does black out.

Steve wakes up in the van.

The feeling of being caged and trapped is familiar. Too familiar.

He can't help it. His mental and emotional fail-safes collapse like a house of cards. He slips smoothly into a state of despair. His breathing becomes labored. His chest constricts.

He panics.

He is crippled by fear and horror. All rational thought leaves him and there is nothing he can do about it except ride it out.

So he does. He rides it out.

Instead of fighting it, he falls headfirst into the pit, as awful as it is. He is a child whose special gift is understanding and embracing emotions - he does what he has learned to do, what hard lessons have taught him to do.

Sometimes you can't fight it. When you can't fight it, you simply have to fall into it. Let it wash over you.

The only way out is through.

The breathing slowly gets easier. As it does, he becomes more aware of his surroundings, of his own thoughts.

He remembers his plan. 

_"There are monsters out there, in the world," Steve tells Hopper and Eleven. "At the Lab, Papa is trying to open the door. He found the door the first time when Eleven escaped. He found it again when he put me in the Bathtub. He makes Numbers so that he can use their powers to control and hurt people. So that he can control all the worlds and all the people in them. He wants me and Eleven for this - to open the door and control what's on the other side."_

_He doesn't say: I saw a monster there, in the dark place. A tall, terrible thing with nothing but a gaping mouth full of teeth for a face. All it wanted to do was feed. Destroy. _

_And... I understood. Sometimes I hate. Sometimes I want to destroy. Sometimes all I want is the end of everything. _

_ On the other side, I saw monsters. I saw monsters, and I saw me. I saw myself, and I opened the door, and somehow that was worse than anything else. _

_I'm the monster and that is worse than anything else._

_"I can't stay here forever without him finding me," is what he says instead. "If Papa doesn't find me, Six will. Six will never stop looking. And when they do find me, they will take me back to the Lab and make me open the door again... if it's not already open. If I open the door, there will be new monsters. Here. Everywhere. And Papa will keep doing what he's been doing. Making monsters. Setting them loose. He won't realize the consequences until it's too late. Which means we need to stop him before it gets worse."_

_"You're right," Hopper says. "I don't like this plan at all."_

Steve can hear the Techs talking, low and tense murmurs. "Taken care of," they say. "Clean-up crew." "Brenner." "Witnesses." "Neutralized." "Dead."

He feels a familiar weight next to him, smells a familiar scent. If his hands were free he could reach over and find a head full of blond curls and trace the line of that firm jaw. 

He doesn't, of course. He can't. His hands aren't free.

None of him is free. 

When they arrive they use a back entrance to take him inside the building. The old, reliable route. He smells stale air. He feels the linoleum under his feet as he is dragged down the hallways... as he is taken to meet his punishment.

His fate.

He can't see Billy - Six - but he knows he's there, waiting, watching, ready to pick up all the pieces of him that are left over, all the shattered remains abandoned by Brenner... and Six will stitch him back together (with essential pieces missing and turned the wrong way around) and this whole cycle of agony and disappointment and despair will begin again.

Again.

He doesn't fight back because it doesn't matter. There is no fighting this.

_"Just..." Hopper shakes his head and huffs as he looks at Steve and listens to this terrible plan. "Just don't fight back, okay? Please, kid? Don't get hurt. Please don't get hurt."_

The kids having been walking for what feels like a million years - or so Dustin says, and Lucas agrees, and Will sighs, and Mike snarks back, and Max lets out a groan - when they finally arrive at Hopper's cabin. They are given no chance to rest before they are immediately greeted by a disturbing and unexpected sight.

A girl about their age, with short, curly brown hair and an over-sized flannel shirt, is leading a staggering Sheriff to his truck. As they turn the kids can see a growing splotch of red high on the older man's shoulder, leaking through his ruined uniform. His face is pale and sweaty in the weak sunlight.

The girl is trying her best to heft him into the front seat, but between his wound and her small stature she is having difficulties. In fact, she is bleeding heavily from her nose, the red staining the front of her shirt. She is so intent on her task that she doesn't see the group of children approaching.

Fittingly, perhaps, the first member of the Party to come up with a response to this turn of events is also the one who says exactly the thing least to the point.

"It's you," Mike says, staring at the girl. 

The sound startles the girl so badly she nearly looses her grip on her burden. The old cop slips in damp leaves and only barely braces himself against the truck in time to avoid falling. She and Hopper both turn - the older man looks at the kids blearily while Eleven snarls, frightened by these new intruders.

"It's you," Mike says again, louder, as if this would make everything make more sense. "The girl from the mall."

"Shit," Hopper murmurs, leaning heavily against the side of his truck.

"You've been shot!" Lucas almost yells, wide eyes fixed on what they can now deduce is a sizable bullet hole in Hopper's shoulder. "Holy shit..."

"Go away," Eleven growls at the Party. 

"We're not going," Dustin shoots back. "We're looking for Seven...Steven."

"So much for the plan," Max murmurs, annoyed.

"Steve?" Eleven echoes, eyes widening.

"Shit," Hopper says again. He tilts his head back as looks up at the trees like they might give him some magical solution to this new problem. They are, as ever, not forthcoming.

"You knocked the stand over," Mike finally gets out what he wanted to say all along. "You weren't anywhere near it and neither was I, but you looked at it and you knocked it over. I saw it. I... I _felt_ it. I knew. I knew it wasn't..."

"You do know Steven... Steve," Dustin grins, lets out a whoosh of relief. "He's here?"

Silence greets the question.

Eleven shifts anxiously. 

Hopper seems to decide that enough is enough and draws himself up as much as possible. The effect is lessened significantly by the blood loss and the low grunt of pain that escapes him, but he is still, even at his most vulnerable, an imposing man. 

"Wheeler, I need you and the rest of the group to go inside the cabin, and..."

"She's like him...them... like Six and Seven," Mike interrupts, the pieces falling into place, his brain finally catching up. "You are, aren't you? You're special, too."

Hopper opens his mouth to speak again but Eleven silences him, placing one small, shaking hand on arm. His reluctance is apparent, but he holds his tongue. Maybe it's better this way; who knows? He presses a hand against his shoulder to stem the bleeding and grits his teeth against his own sense of powerlessness.

Eleven takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and pushes out with her mind. It is an unnecessary waste of energy, perhaps, but something is telling her to do it.

Something - a vice that sounds like Steve's - is telling her to show them. Trust them. Let them in.

Mike is lifted into the air, held by an invisible force.

He lets out a noise of mingled surprise and fear before his mouth drops open in something like pleased awe. He hovers about a foot off the ground for a moment, during which all the kids around him stare in wonder. Satisfied, Eleven gently sets him down again.

A loaded silence descends.

"Wow," Mike finally murmurs, awestruck. "Wow."

It's true, it never gets old - these amazing people and their amazing powers. These wonders. These miracles.

Hopper lets out a low moan and slouches back against the truck. 

Ah. Right.

"What happened?" Lucas demands.

"Where's Seven?" Dustin asks again. "He was here?"

"Yes," Eleven admits. "He came a few days ago...a week ago. He was running from the bad men."

"Papa," Mike whispers.

Eleven hears him, flinches slightly, nods. "He stayed with us. He was okay. He hurt his leg but he was okay and he was healing, in his leg and his mind. He was hiding from Papa but also from... from another one of us. Brother."

There is the briefest of pauses before the realization hits the kids all at once. When it does, it takes their breath away.

"Six...?" Max asks, feeling sick.

Eleven nods again.

"Steve asked me to check up on you guys," Hopper says quietly, gauging their reactions and finding his expectations confirmed. "He wanted to make sure you were safe. That Brenner and Six hadn't found you."

Fear and shame are creeping into their cheeks, and Hopper can see it a mile away. There's no point scolding them, though. He looks down at Eleven, speaks to her instead.

"Six found them, but he didn't hurt them," he muses. "Do you think that means Steve might get through to him? Maybe get him on our side?"

Eleven furrows her brow and opens her mouth to speak but before she can answer Lucas interrupts.

"He told us he and Seven escaped together. That they were friends..."

"More than friends," Max murmurs, half to herself.

"...And that they got separated and that he was trying to find Seven. He didn't hurt us, but... yesterday he just disappeared. Did he come here?"

"Yeah," Hopper growls. "Not alone either."

"He was supposed to bring them here," Eleven reminds him. She lets out a tired little hiccup and wipes blood from under her nose. "We thought if he came here we could find out where the Lab is - use him to find it and then get it shut down. Steve said Six would never let him go, so we needed... we needed to destroy the Lab. The source of everything. Steve used his powers to see and then he came up with a plan. They...they came. I hid. They took Steve. We have a plan but Hopper got shot and we didn't think..."

"Oh shit," Lucas echoes.

Max shakes her head. "Son of a bitch."

"We've got to follow them!" Dustin exclaims.

"You know where they're going?" Mike asks.

Eleven nods. "I can follow Steve. We practiced. I can sense him, see his thoughts if he lets me, even without me looking at him. I can find him..."

_"Between the two of us we should be able to do it," Steve tells her, his eyes bright as they practice. _

_Eleven has her blindfold on, but she can still see Steve because Steve is seeing. He reaches out with his mind and she finds him. _

_"Between my dreams and your dream-walking, you should be able to follow me. Find the Lab. Find a way in. Hopper can destroy it..."_

"Didn't see me getting shot, though, did he?" Hopper grumbles, and it's true that this is an unforeseen complication, one of the blurred areas in Steve's master plan. Life is full of those, unfortunately. "Shit..."

"Can you drive?" Will asks.

The old cop swears again and looks back up at the trees, and that is answer enough for everyone.

For a moment, a long agonizing moment, they're stuck. They're swamped, grounded here with a friend in danger and an adult too hurt to drive.

The slight, red-headed girl eyes up the truck and then nods shortly, a look of pure determination on her face.

"I got this," says Max. "Anyone got a cardboard box and some string?"

The Techs don't take them to a Testing Room. They don't take them to the room with the bed with the leather straps and the machine with all the dials.

They don't take them to the Nursery - except of course they wouldn't, would they? Six and Seven haven't been in the Nursery in ages. Why would Six even think that they might take him and Seven there?

It's just that the Nursery seems strangely close now, looming in his mind, and...

They don't take them back to the room they used to sleep in - the room they share. Six would almost call it 'their room', except that Numbers don't own things or rooms or themselves so it can't be that.

Can't be 'theirs'. 

All the same, Six wants to be in their room now. He wants that very much.

He wants Steve-Steven-Seven-The Boy-His Boy-His His _His. _

He wants him naked. He wants to drink every inch of him in with his eyes, touch every part of him with his hands, make sure he is safe and whole and real. He wants to taste him. He wants his solid weight pressed against him as they curl around each other, tucked under warm blankets. He wants to be in their room with the lights off and the door locked - the world on the outside, far away, and him and Seven wrapped up in each other's arms and safe.

He wants that.

At least... he thought he wanted that.

He's not so sure now.

_I’m Steve. I take care of myself now._

_If you loved me..._

_If you love me, you have to..._

_I don't know how._

Now it's so close... the room and Seven and sleep... they're all so close he can almost taste it. Just a little bit longer and he's home.

_Home._

That special word.

That empty word.

Something has changed. He's so close but it's all still out of reach, and there's a feeling now... a kind of discontent, a disconnect. A disconcerting realization. It almost doesn't seem worth it. None of this was worth the price he paid for it. And he's not getting what he wants... not really.

Just a shade. Just a dream.

What he's getting is just a mirage.

It's true that he has won the fight - the big, all-encompassing, all-consuming fight. He completed his mission and now both he and Seven are back here in the Lab.

It was almost an accident... it was a terrible miracle that the cop, Hopper, hadn't managed to disable the tracker in time to stop this from happening. 

A miracle. Sure.

Seven himself must have known that this would happen, or he never would have spoken as he did. Even dreaming, rebellious Seven must have recognized the inevitability of their eventual recapture and return to this... place. He may not have wanted to accept it, but... 

It happened. 

It wasn't really Six's (fault) doing. Anyway, the results are the same.

He won. Mission accomplished.

So why does it feel like he has lost everything?

_If you love me..._

_I don't know how to do that._

_ I didn’t save him. He begged and screamed and I didn’t help him. I just stood there._

Six's head hurts and he's so tired, and it's a tiredness that's in his bones, in his soul. In the past, the promise of Seven and safety was always enough to carry him forward, carry him through this deep weariness and back towards his love.

Now...

He can shut the door, but he can't lock it. He can sleep with Seven in their room, but the dangers that wait just outside their room never go away, do they?

Someone is always trying to get in.

Even worse, someone is always trying to get out.

_Let me go._

_Brenner hurt him and I just stood there and watched._

_I don’t know how. _

Six stares at his lover's back as the Techs drag them both down the corridor, and the realization hits him then - not like a punch, not like a train, but rather like a subtle click, a brief touch, like something he's known all alone - that he hasn't won anything.

No.

He has lost everything.

It never really belonged to him in the first place.

They take them both to Lab One, the room that used to house the Bathtub before Seven destroyed it. It has been cleaned and is on its way to being repaired and rebuilt. There have been some changes made in their absence. It's always amazing how quickly the lab drones work. How quickly messes are cleaned up.

Except this room isn't perfect. This mess hasn't quite been fixed.

There are gurneys, machines, all sorts of tools and equipment for weighing and measuring the universe. There is a chair, heavy and solid, with straps attached. They have started to rebuild the Bathtub, even. The framework has been restored, and once they add new glass panels... well, it'll almost be as the last few weeks had ever happened.

Almost.

Because... because on the far wall behind where the new Bathtub is being built, there is a metal frame, a collection of monitors, and a long crack in the concrete.

The crack is wide and glows with colors that Six has never seen before, and threaded across the space are things like vines or veins. They pulse subtly, moving almost like a living thing, like a sickly, staggering heartbeat. 

Six has not seen the gateway before, and the sight of it sends a thrill of terror right up his spine to his animal hindbrain. He has seen no movies, read no books, and knows nothing of science fiction or Spielberg, but even he can recognize the otherworldly strangeness of this horror, this doorway, this nightmare...

This amazing thing that Seven made. This living thing that came from him, a child born of his terror.

Brenner is there, and Williams, and a few other Techs. They have their tools, primed and ready - Six can see the boxes, the wires, the guns, the tasers. Papa wears his neatly pressed suit and looks as formidable as ever. 

Except, to Six's eyes at least, there is something almost faded about the man now. He looks terrible, terrifying. He is the man who breaks them and remakes them again and again and again. 

Yet there is something missing. Something has changed. Something is gone.

It's a bit shocking. Although...

Six wonders if Papa is really the one who has changed.

Maybe it is more that Six understands now that Brenner can't offer him all those things he didn't know he wanted - earrings and donuts and beaches and leather jackets.

Maybe it is that the man seems small and insignificant when compared to an angry, determined spitfire with red hair.

Maybe it is simply that the man looks washed out and gray next to the memory of Steve's calm, contented face tilting up to catch the morning sunlight.

Maybe.

And it's not that Six didn't know, in an abstract sort of way, that those things existed out there in the world - forbidden fruits waiting to be plucked. It's not like every one of his missions outside the Lab wasn't a tease, a hint, a shadow of what he _could_ have. 

It hadn't mattered, though, because the bigger prize was always here, at home. Six could have it here.

Except he couldn't, could he? He owned Seven, yes... possessed him in every way one could possess a person.

In every way but the only way that mattered.

He owned Seven, but he had never even come close to touching _Steve_.

_Let me go. Let me go. I'm Steve. Let me go._

Maybe Brenner seems so small and shallow and insignificant now because Six sees, for the first time, something strange and steady and unyielding in Seven - in _Steve's_ face. He sees the shine of something new, something true.

Brenner has changed because Seven has changed. There is now something that was always there, perhaps, but never like this... never like this.

Maybe it's because Six sees... knows...

This time Seven isn't going to break.

They separate the two boys, and Six feels a physical ache at the loss of proximity. They move him off to the side, place him between two Techs, and settle Steve into the metal chair with the wires.

One of the Techs moves towards Brenner and speaks to him in a low murmur. Both boys hear snatches - "shot", "three casualties", "one witness", "witness was neutralized", "police". Steve holds it together admirably, but Six sees the blood drain out of his face, sees the minute flinch. The plan has gone wrong, perhaps, and Steve can't see any further into the future than anyone else here.

Their positions from the cabin are reversed now: now Steve is strapped down to the chair and Six stands, watching, waiting for the other boy to say some magic, secret word. 

Steve, for his part, blinks back the fear that threatens to undo him. There are bigger problems right now. He can't keep his eyes off the crack in the wall. He is as terrified of Papa as he always was - perhaps more now that he has so much more to lose - but that is not where his gaze falls.

He knows what the crack in the wall is. He can feel the sticky, oily emotions radiating from those pulsing vines. He's seen its true nature in his dreams, although seeing it now, here, is beyond frightening.

It's a gateway. It's _the_ gateway.

He wants to get away from it; he wants to walk through it. He is drawn to it because it is a kind of extension of him. Because, with his abilities, he can feel something moving just beyond that boundary. He can feel more beings, more minds - strange and powerful and alien - and he wants to see. Even though he is frightened, he wants to know. He is transfixed.

"What did you see in the Bathtub, Seven?" 

Steve blinks. He pulls his gaze away, seems to realize suddenly where he is, who is in front of him. Papa gives him no preamble to ease him into the present moment. Just the single question breaking the heavy silence that Steve hadn't noticed until it was interrupted.

For a moment, Steve doesn't know who Brenner is talking to. 'Seven' is someone else. A stranger. It hasn't been that long, really... he hasn't been 'Steve' for more then a few days, and yet...

He blinks again and looks up at the man and, in the face of all the history and pain and changes in his life, forgets why he ever was afraid of him.

He doesn't say anything.

Brenner lets out an almost imperceptible sigh. He tries again, softening his tone.

"I know you were reluctant to go into the Bathtub, Seven. We believe that your fear released a pulse of force and caused the... incident... that led to all this. So, I'll ask you again. What did you see?"

It's funny... Papa is trying to be gentle now, but Steve isn't fooled. He isn't convinced. He doesn't even need to dip into the older man's mind to see the echoes of past horrors, the depravity of his desires.

And now, in this room, even though he is surrounded by all his tools and men and weapons, Papa stares at Steve and demands something irrelevant and pointless. He sounds like nothing so much as a lost and petulant child.

Steve can't help but see the cracks in the man's facade. They are shattered wide open.

Even though he isn't the target of Papa's ire, Six sees it too. _He has lost something_, Six thinks from his perch on the other side of the room. _He really has._

"You see this?" The older man gestures to the wall, to the gateway, pulsing and glowing. "It's a problem, Seven. It's a mess. It's what you left us with that day you attempted to escape. And you did escape, for a time, but you're back now. And we've had to do daily battle with this massive disruption..."

Brenner fixes Steve with a sharp look. "...A gateway to another world."

_He wants me and Eleven for this - to open the door and control what's on the other side._

_Hopper... is he dead? Is he dead? Eleven, where is she, I can't feel her..._

"I've sent sent men in," Brenner continues. "I've sent equipment. Everything that goes in comes back mangled and useless, if it comes back at all. And we are still no closer to finding out why then we were when you caused this disaster a week ago."

Six glances over at the wall and shudders.

"I think you know what's in there, Seven," Brenner's voice goes even lower, silky and heavy with an unspoken threat. "I think you saw what lives on the other side. I think you saw it when you were in the Bathtub and it frightened you. But you mustn't be frightened, Seven. You must think rationally, now. All living beings can communicate - they are rational. Just waiting to make contact. You must tell me what you saw. You must tell us what is beyond the door."

Steve looks up at Brenner. He slowly shakes his head.

No.

Brenner hits him. Backhand across the face.

It's hard and fast and in a way, despite the raw force behind it, Steve is initially more shocked than hurt by it. Six jolts - it's subtle and restrained but the Techs on either side of him notice it and flinch. Williams, who is watching this exchange with a frightening focus, shifts uncomfortably.

Brenner looks shocked, too. He doesn't usually get his hands dirty in that way, but he has been under such pressure...

Steve feels a terrible pain in his cheekbone like maybe he cracked it somehow. He tastes blood in his mouth. The familiar iron tang.

The previously unidentified 'thing' Brenner has lost is his self-control, it seems. His patience. His willingness to play the long game. There is frantic desperation, now, driven on by a not-so-latent madness.

It makes him sloppy, but it doesn't make him any less dangerous.

Steve sees this clearly, evaluates it and takes it into consideration before locking his aching jaw and stiffening his spine.

It changes nothing.

He shakes his head again - to clear it and to reaffirm his 'no'.

"Come now, Seven," Brenner takes a deep breath and straightens his suit, pulling himself together. "This isn't like you. You love to share. You always loved telling stories..."

"Lies," Steve interrupts.

No one is more surprised by the sharp word than Steve. No one interrupts Papa and absolutely no one corrects him. Ever. But, since we are already breaking up the universe...

Steve clears his throat anyway, and repeats himself, voice quiet and hoarse yet firm.

"Lies," he says. "You always said they were lies. Or dreams. And then you'd hurt me."

He shifts his jaw and he can feel it click... the click it always makes now when he tenses and moves his jaw a certain way. The click that developed after Papa's punishment with the gag.

He can feel the click, hear the click. A reminder. Brenner hears it too.

It's such a simple accusation, but an accusation is what it is, and it rings the truer for being so simple. There is something that flashes across Brenner's face almost too quickly for Steve to see.

"Yes," he says. "That... that was..."

_Wrong_, Steve thinks. _Wrong. Say it. It was wrong. What you did was wrong._

"...An unfortunate miscalculation. We have missed some important opportunities and must make up the difference now."

Of course, Papa is too arrogant to show true contrition. The emotion that creeps along the edge of this exchange is only the regret of a chess player who realizes he has made an error five moves back.

"Do you know what this is, Seven?" Brenner asks suddenly, turning slightly and motioning to the strange black box sitting ominously on the table next to where Six is standing. 

_Steve_, Steve corrects silently before shaking his head. He does not know what that is.

"This is a new thing," Brenner says. His voice has gone a bit funny - he almost seems distracted, vague. Like he's distancing himself from this.

Williams shifts again, blinking once before dropping his gaze to the floor.

"It's less volatile than the electrodes," Brenner says. He picks up a remote - one similar to the one he uses for the ankle bands, and programs something in to it. "No wires needed. Less chance of permanent damage. But just as effective."

_Yes,_ Steve thinks as a Tech steps up next to him an attached a sticky pad of rubber to his temple and strap him to the chair. _Yes, I believe you._

It's slow going at first. Very slow.

First off, they need to tie the cardboard to Max's shoe so she can reach the gas and break pedals, and then on further consideration they need to get her a few old encyclopedias to sit on so she can see clearly over the steering wheel. 

With each passing moment Hopper looks more and more likely to put a pin in the whole thing and call it a day, and he didn't look super convinced it was going to pan out to begin with. The only thing that stops him is the increasingly desperate look on the kids faces as they fight tooth and nail to make this hair-brained scheme work.

That, and his own disturbing imagination as it offers him graphic images of what Steve might even now be going through.

He pops more pain pills and some other blue and yellow pill that he gets very cagey about when Dustin questions him, and quietly counts out bullets into his service revolver.

"He's on the road, they're pulling up..." Eleven says, her voice distant but clear, and Max swerves slightly to regain control of massive truck. Will lets out a low 'meep' noise but otherwise no one dares to comment on her driving or Eleven's navigational skills. It's not that no one in the car is concerned - they just know better than to say anything.

Eleven is wearing a bandanna tied around her eyes, much to everyone's consternation, but she can see Steve clearly. He is thinking very loudly, telegraphing all he can to her, sending her pictures and sounds - a sensory overload. It's jumbled and emotion-driven, but she can still see.

"It's a straight road..."

Max floors it. The kids shriek in the backseat of the truck and Hopper lets out a low moan as the movement jostles him. Dustin is patching his shoulder up with the first aid kit and God love the kid but he's making a mess. Rainbow band-aids for fuck's sake. Hopper is still annoyed at having to sit in the back while Eleven, as their living map, gets the front seat.

"This isn't right," he says grimly, letting out another yelp when Dustin accidentally presses too hard on his wound, which has fortunately stopped bleeding but will still need professional attention sooner rather than later. "This is taking us to that place, that Energy Department building. It's just offices. I checked it out ages ago."

"My dad says all buildings that say 'Department of Energy' on the front are secret government testing sites for weapons," Mike chimes in from where he is squished next to Will.

"Weapons?" Hopper asks.

"Yeah, like nukes and stuff."

"Or maybe experiments," Will adds thoughtfully. "Maybe other kinds of weapons."

"It's there," Eleven rasps. "Department of Energy."

She is about to say more, but something stops her. She gasps, suddenly feeling like she has been drenched in cold water... and then she is overtaken by something... by a terrible, shocking agony.

An agony she is sharing, God help them both, with Steve.

She screams.

Steve is having doubts about the black box not causing permanent, catastrophic damage. Brenner said that, right? He said something about damage a while ago, way back before the pain started...

Pain. Haha. Understatement (Hopper explained that concept to him. And also sarcasm. Very 'haha'). 

This is something else. Something else _entirely._

The older man hits the button on his handy remote again and Steve almost cracks a tooth holding back the shriek building inside of him before his strength crumbles, before the sound breaks through the flimsy wall in his psyche, shattering his control and reverberating through Lab One. The scream, for all that, is still a weak, inadequate representation of what he is feeling. Of the soul-destroying comprehensiveness of this torment.

He swears the gateway in the wall pulses in sympathy, and he can almost taste the strange colors that flicker and glow there.

He swears he can see it spread. Grow. Grow wider... less stable. He can almost see it staring back at him, waiting for some silent signal.

The pain stops. Steve gasps for air but is barely given a moment's respite before another wave of agony rips through him.

There is a noise from somewhere - a protest. Sev - Steve isn't sure where it comes from. He hears it through the haze a moment before all thought is erased. Six or Williams. One of them. Not even a word - just a noise.

Brenner ignores it. He and Seven are trapped in a dance now, just the two of them. No interruptions. 

It's all happening again. The same dance with different steps. The father. The child. Transgression and punishment. Action, reaction.

Their whole relationship in one destructive exchange.

"I will have order. Discipline. I'm going to break you, Seven," Papa says as he takes his finger off the button, his voice even, almost casual. The boy, shattered, slumps down in the chair. "It's necessary. I do understand that now."

He's insane. The man, Papa, is insane. Steve can see it in the eyes - hyper-focused yet strangely detached, and bright with some inner spark. Maybe it has manifested now because of his extended exposure to the gateway, to that mouth of madness. Maybe he was always secretly this cracked.

Doesn't matter. Brenner is on his quest now. His hero's journey. 

"If you're waiting for someone to help you, Seven," Papa says, "let me disabuse you - they are not coming. You don't need to look at the wall or at Six. No one else knows you're here, and no one else is going to interrupt us. You are the only one who can make this stop now."

Lie. _Lie._ Papa holds the button. Papa controls the pain... when it starts, when it stops...

"No one else is going to stop this, Seven."

He can't... he _can't_...

Seven... no, Steven, _Steve_... gasps for breath and tries desperately to remember what he is supposed to say or not say. What he's supposed to do. There was something, wasn't there?

There's a trick, a magic word, a special sacrifice he needs to make so that Papa-Father-Monster-Lover-God will let him go. Let him sleep.

"You did this, Seven. You control this. This is the punishment you have earned."

_The secret is that there is no trick, no word, no escape. The sacrifice is you... in a chair, on a bed, on a slab. Offered up. Devoured._

He doesn't know what he's supposed to do.

Blood trickles down from his nose, into his mouth, down his chin. His powers are trying to flair out, trying to protect him - but the machine won't let them, and he can't control it. The power rages but it can't get out.

_Please don't get hurt. _Those words echo in his mind in a voice that is not his own - he can't recall who said them, though. Someone he loved... but what is love? It doesn't exist here.

_Please don't get hurt._

It's what he does, though. He exists to be hurt. The world pours punishments upon him and he takes it all.

It is his purpose - it always has been.

It is the only thing that truly belongs to him.

_Please don't get hurt._

_I don't know how to do that_, he replies in his head, but those aren't his words either. Those belong to someone else. They break his heart.

He blinks through the tears and sees another face twisted in pain, in impotent agony, unable to find a way out, unable to come up with a word or a trick that will make this stop. The face is so familiar - it's like looking in a mirror. The only mirror Seven has ever had. 

If he looks half as bad as Six does right now - that mirror-face wet with tears and pale with fear and misery - he really is in trouble. 

More pain - just a jolt, just a taste. There and gone before he can scream, but it brings him back to himself.

Back to the present and all that the present is...

The endless tapestry of moments that led to this.

_He doesn’t tell lies… but he used to talk about the pictures in his head, and when that happened Brenner told him the story of the boy and the wolves._

_I'm going to die. The lost boy. The wolves aren't in the woods, they're right here. _

_WAKE UP!_

It brings him back.

_I'm going to die._

The reconstructed Bathtub looms in the background, big and nightmarish, framing Brenner's tall form in Steve's line of vision. The man who almost killed him. The place he almost drowned, the place he almost died. His horror, his fear, his violent reaction to the sudden, shocking sight of a monster that was nothing but teeth and hate... and then he was there in water, in the Bathtub, pounding and screaming and trying to get out.

Trapped and screaming and silenced and drowning.

A dead thing in a jar.

_He runs. It hurts so bad but the hurt was his choice, his choice to hurt himself, to bring the rock down again and again until he was free. He runs through the woods. He tilts his head back, and his mouth opens, and he gasps as he inhales water and air._

_Water and air._

_He is drowning in the Bathtub. He is going to die. He is drowning and silenced and screaming and trapped and dying in the water, in the Bathtub._

_He inhales water and air._

_In the rain he can taste the trees and the earth and the bittersweet resonance of living things._

_Yes, I am going to die. I've died a hundred times in a hundred different ways._

Pain, but it is his. It is _his._

What did he say to Hopper that night he spoke of his secret shame? _We’re powerless because we choose to be._

His choice. It belongs to him.

"You control this," Papa says, and Steve latches onto that. He takes him at his word.

_MY choice._

Power. Past a certain point, pain becomes power. Emotion becomes power. Choice becomes power. These things are identity. Identity is power. Something that is yours and yours alone - that is power.

Steve breathes. He holds on. He wants to let go but he doesn't. He holds on.

_I choose my own way to hurt._

“Try telling the truth this time, and make this all less painful,” Brenner says, and something about that sentence, that _word_ breaks through the haze, makes Steve snap. Something about Brenner's words, Papa's words, those careful, careless words...

The truth?

_The Truth._

Oh, that word, that word… and what does it mean? To Steve, to Seven, it never meant what it should have meant. His truth was never what Brenner wanted to hear, not what anyone wanted to hear. But just because it was unwanted didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.

Steve realizes that that’s why Brenner never liked him. Brenner doesn't like anyone, but he _hates_ Seven and this is why.

Brenner always _knew_ he was telling the truth. He said Seven was lying but he wasn't, and Papa knew. He knew - he just never wanted to hear it. And he hated Seven for telling him the truth. Always.

The truth is...

_He couldn't be what Brenner wanted. He might die if he left, might be terribly hurt... but he would die for certain if he stayed. A quiet kind of death. Death by a thousand small cuts, over the course of a short and wasted lifetime._

_He can't go back._

_He won't._

The truth is...

_"If you love me, you have to let me go."_

_"I don't know how to do that," Billy had said. Steve understood. Of course he did. _

_How do you let your soul go? How do you separate yourself from your shadow?_

The truth is...

_Hopper told him, "You're going to be okay." Eleven held his hand. _

_And he knew, then, what the truth was._

The truth is...

_"I don't know what's going to happen," Steve told Eleven and Hopper. "There all a lot of things I can't see... and it's all out of order. _ _But... I know I can't run away and hide. I've been hiding for too long and I don't want to anymore."_

_It's the truth._

The noise that escapes Steve then is completely unexpected. It shocks everyone into that room - they all go silent and still, eyes wide with alarm as Steve...

It is not a whine or a plea or a cry for help.

It is not a scream.

It is not a sob.

It is slightly crazed, and definitely bordering on the hysterical.

It is also bright and loud and happy.

It is laughter.

_Laughter._

Brenner and Williams stare at him and Six makes a soft, panicked grunt from his own position a few feet away. Seven giggles, mirth bubbling up and out like a pot of water boiling over until his whole body is vibrating with the sound – _Yak! Yak! Yak!_

Until his whole body is shaking with good, plain, solid laughter, right from the gut, full of simple joy.

The truth?

Sure.

He’ll give them the truth.

“I control it. All of it. They’re gonna come for you,” he says, gasping and smiling, and for once he can see it all, the future stretched out clear and precise like words on a page - not jumbled, not subjective, not a dream.

Just the truth.

“Hopper is alive. Eleven is coming. They’re all coming! They’re coming here and they’re gonna save us!”

_"Find a way in. Come find me."_

_"We'll come find you, Steve. Promise."_

_Promise. Steve trusts them. They will keep their promise.  
_

_He is not alone and he chooses his own way to burn._

Brenner opens his mouth but Seven cuts him off.

“You… you moron!" he yells, finding at last the secret word - the word a girl in an ice cream shop taught him. "Moron! You think you can control the gateway, but you can’t! Moron!"

Steve slumps forward, exhausted, and growls, almost feral, before another round of laughter breaks through, raw and bright.

"You’re gonna die down here and when you’re dead nobody is ever going to remember you as anything other than a monster! You failed… you understand? An army? You thought we were gonna be an army?! That you were going to use us to take over the world?! No!"

He shakes his head, vibrates with his whole body, full of anger and violence and mirth. The puzzle pieces all connect and he sees them come together and he laughs and laughs and laughs because it's all just so...

"Moron!" he howls with glee, seeing Hopper and Eleven and the kids, seeing himself, tall and strong and running through the woods. "They’re all coming… you’re gonna be a toast!”

Steve’s eyes flick over the Techs standing in the shadows and the laughter bubbles up again as he corrects himself.

“Two toasts! Two pieces of toast!”

He giggles, delighted.

Six looks on in horror as Brenner presses the remote again.

**Then **

_The first time Six saw Seven was in the Nursery._

_The Nursery is actually several 'nurseries' - a series of multiple adjoining rooms marked with rainbow stickers on the doors. The daytime inhabitants of said rooms are subdivided according to their ages, abilities, and the level of socialization Brenner believes is required for them to be manageable and reasonably well-adjusted test subjects._

_Six was the only one in his age group for a while. In most of his memories of his life pre-Seven, he is alone._

_There was a girl with dark skin and hair who was with him briefly before she was moved, and then a much older boy who was only with him for only two weeks. After Three was taken away, Six was left alone in his section of the Nursery for most of the time. _

_It's fine. Boring, perhaps. He doesn't really know the difference between 'friends' and 'alone' at this point... not consciously. He eats and naps and plays with the few toys he is allowed._

_His favorite toy is a small, dark blue-green car with a long hood. Six knows nothing about cars but it looks sleek and fast, like it has a secret power to it. _

_Six always responds well to those sorts of things - to promises of power and control. To the kind of freedom strength offers. _

_His minders make a note of that, write it down on his chart._

_The Tech who sometimes kept an eye out for him when he was in the Nursery – an older guy with thinning hair and a mustache – called the car a Chevrolet once. Six didn’t know what that meant, but he rolled the word over in his mind that night in his room before he went to sleep and kept it safe and close afterwards like a secret, magic spell._

_Chevrolet. Chev-ro-let._

_He’d roll the car over floor, up the walls, over every surface he could find. He’d line a few cars up and make them race. He’d sit with one of the soft toys, a stuffed frog, and try to inspire its interest in his activities by chattering at it and then throwing things._

_He accidentally set fire to the frog when he was nearly five. He was moved to a different room after that._

_He was allowed to keep the toy Chevrolet._

_Three told him that their powers were what decided their placement in the Nursery. When he was placed with Six it was because his powers were potentially damaging and he needed to be in a secure area. _

_Not for long, though, Three said. Three was going to move into the Testing Rooms soon. Wonderland._

_The Testing Rooms are where Six wants to go, but he needs to wait until he's a little bit older. When he's older Papa will take him to the Testing Rooms and they'll play together all the time. _

_He'll show Papa how special he is, then._

_In the meantime, Brenner and his Techs learned quickly that Six was not built for long-term isolation. Things seemed to catch fire with greater frequency when he was left alone for extended periods._

_Six is the same age as his name when one day the Nursery door opens and a small boy is led into the room. He is Six’s age or a little younger, clutching the hand of one of the female Techs in charge of the smaller, more docile Numbers._

_Six is so jumpy and frantic from loneliness that his first impulse is to hurt the intruders. In fact, if his new powers weren't so unreliable and physically taxing to summon, he might have tried to burn them. _

_The impulse is there, but he refrains from pursuing it too far. Young as he is, he also knows that boys who burn things get punished. He doesn't want to be zapped by the big machine with the dials again._

_As it is, he bares his teeth angrily, ready to pitch whatever hard and heavy thing he can get his hand on right at their vulnerable faces and scream at them until they let him be._

_ He's even willing to throw his Chevrolet if it makes them leave him alone, if it prevents or delays pain and frustration and the gnawing ache of upset. If they are coming to give him a bath or try to teach him words again, they’ll be sorry._

_The fire burns inside but has nowhere to go. It curdles, turning Six slightly feral. He lets out a noise that is almost a growl._

_The little boy looks at him with wide, liquid-brown eyes. He’s pale, a little pudgy with lingering baby-fat, and strangely fragile-looking. _

_Six is bigger and could smash him in an instant if he wanted to. The boy is weak, small...and Six is strong. He's stronger than his pain, he knows he is, and he'll prove it by hurting these intruders and making them go away. _

_Six raises his arms menacingly… a wrathful little godling._

_The strange boy keeps one hand on the Tech. He watches, sees Six's posture... and doesn't flinch. He just takes a cautious step forward and blinks at him._

_Six pauses mid-attack and stares back, transfixed._

_The boy releases the Tech and takes another step forward. For all his ostensible fragility he does not seem to be afraid – only watchful, like Six is a puzzle to solve or a picture to look at. He does not seem to see Six as a threat._

_What’s more, his gaze is sympathetic, kind. He seems so... so solid, so steady. A focal point, an anchor, an unwavering band of light in sharp contrast to Six's own whirlwind energy. It is so rare for Six to see anything like that, and the vision of calm, the possibility of gentleness and soothing physical touch is too tempting to resist. _

_Six drops his hands and skitters forward a step or two, unsure but hungry for some sort of contact. He wants something he can't quite define, and he knows... he just knows it's here. It's in this boy._

_“This is Seven,” the Tech says quietly, leaning on the door frame with her arms folded, watching the interaction._

_Seven. **Seven.** _

_Six feels something sweet and warm stirring inside of him. _

_Like the numbers, next to each other in sequence. Six and Seven. _

_Perfect._

_Seven makes a small noise that is almost like a soft cooing sound and stretches out a hand to Six. _

_Six wants to take that hand, hold it in his own. He wants to show the boy his Chevrolet and share his secret words and thoughts with him. He wants to know the boy's secrets, too... wants to know what he is and what he thinks and what he feels and why. He wants to study his face, watch him smile, make him laugh._

_He wants him to stay… to stay forever. He wants to keep him._

_His brain whirls - making connections, making plans. Building a new world designed to accommodate not one, but two - TWO - hearts and minds and bodies and souls. _

_He wonders what he’ll need to do to keep Seven. Will he need to complete a test, one of Papa’s tests? _

_If he’s a good boy and proves it to everyone maybe they will give him Seven, like a reward. Maybe as long as he holds Seven's hands and keeps his eyes on him and tucks him away in a safe corner no one will take him away. Maybe if he gives Seven all the toys and food and his napping blanket Seven will be happy and want to stay._

_He suddenly feels rather raw, eager and almost desperate to make sure the boy never leaves his sight._

_His gaze flicks over to the Tech, who nods slightly. _

_“He’ll be sharing the Nursery with you," she says. "For a while, anyway. We'll see how it goes.”_

_Sharing the Nursery. _

_Sharing._

_ It’ll be theirs, then - his and Seven’s. They’ll make it their space full of their dreams, and their joys will be doubled because they will be shared._

_Six and Seven, never to be truly parted again after that day, no matter what._

_And the little boy who has learned by now that you never get something for nothing, plans and schemes and dreams up in his secret ways to stay with his new friend forever._

** Then **

_The kids are not as blind as they seem. At least, one of them isn't._

_It's Max who sees that something isn't right here. But she's smart. She chooses her moment with care._

_It's their last night together, though Max doesn't know that yet. She makes Billy ham and cheese on crackers. His mind is far away - on his mission, on his failures, on Papa and Williams and Seven. The TV buzzes in the background. On the screen a man calls a woman "baby"._

_"What is Seven to you, exactly?" Max asks, seemingly apropos of nothing._

_At any other time the question would have startled Billy, confused him. A sneak attack. As it happens, the question is a softer refrain of what is already running at speed through his own head. He answers easily, with more honesty than he would have given her if his guard was up._

_"We were together," he says quietly. "In the Lab."_

_"Yeah? And?"_

_"We shared a room. For a long time. I don't remember much before there was Seven. There wasn't much to remember before him. Just... just alone. But when he came, we shared a room... and we were together there."_

_"He's a friend?"_

_Billy shrugs and gives her a small half-smile. "What's a friend to you?" he asks, echoing her earlier question. He's not being silly or stupid. He genuinely wants to know her definition of the word he's heard again and again and never quite understood._

_Max, to her credit, considers her words before speaking rather than giving him a glib answer. _

_"When I first moved here, Lucas and the others... mostly Lucas... they all, like, stalked me a bit. Not anything crazy, but they were following me around from a distance a lot. And when I caught them they'd make up some stupid excuse or tell me some crazy story about why they were around. They were trying to come across all cool, but they're huge creeper dorks." _

_She grins to herself a little, fondly, and shakes her head. "But I'm a little bit of a dork, too. I guess we became friends when they started sharing stuff with me. And when I stopped lying to them about who I was, too. When we all stopped trying to cool and were just okay being ourselves. Friends share, and they don't lie. You can be yourself and they still like you."_

_"Share each other?" Billy asks._

_"Share with each other," Max clarifies. "But yeah, I guess share each other, too. Mike didn't want to share his friends with me at first. He didn't want me in the group... not until he figured out that I wasn't trying to take anyone away from him."_

_Billy considers this. By this reckoning, he and Seven are not friends. Six has no friends. He doesn't share. He lies. He does it for all the right reasons - he wants to keep Seven safe and close - but still. _

_He is himself. Who else would he be? He is Six (Billy) and he has Seven, and Seven still likes him._

_(Except he won't, will he? When you find him you are going to do the unforgivable thing... you are going to bring him back to that place...you didn’t help him, you let Brenner hurt him, you didn’t save him...)_

_And if he loses Seven, then he will have lost..._

_(Everything)_

_(Himself)_

_"He's my husband," Billy says, finally. He's hopeful that the word will do what is has always done in the past and silence the mental arguments always going on in his brain. That it might placate Max as it sometimes placates Seven._

_It doesn't._

_Max scrunches up her nose. "Like...boyfriends?"_

_Billy looks at her, confused. "We're... boys? And...?"_

_"Like, dating," Max tries._

_Billy blinks, face blank._

_"Do you guys have sex?" she finally asks, flatly. Billy nods. "Right..." she tapers off, processing this information. _

_She is suddenly ill at ease about all this. Seven didn't talk about much of anything having to do with the Lab when he was with them. Definitely didn't mention a boyfriend or husband. Seemed almost scared when talking about the people who were there with him. No... no, not scared. Unsettled...?_

_"It's more than that," Billy interrupts the silence. "I need him. I need... I need him to be safe."_

_The older boy looks so sad in that moment that Max can't help comforting him. _

_"He will be," she says. "I'm sure he is. We'll find him, Billy."_

_"He's safe with me."_

_Max is a little taken aback, but she shakes her head after a moment and disagrees. "Neither of you were safe in that place. Brenner hurt you both, and even if he didn't you were trapped there. You couldn't leave."_

_He knows that, and it's the same point Seven - Steve - is going to make again less then twenty-four hours later. He's not stupid - he does understand._

_But safety is relative. Billy - Six - knows that better than anyone. Safety is control. He has control in the Lab. He...he..._

_(Why didn’t you move? You broke him, lost his love in that moment, in that room with Brenner talking and Williams touching him... it was your fault. Why didn’t you save him?)_

_He has... something like control in the Lab. There are rules. There aren't rules out here. _

_It's all slipping away._

_"Just because it's the way it's always been doesn't mean it's safe," Max adds, almost as if she can hear his thoughts. "Sometimes you need to learn when to let go of the handlebars."_

_"Handlebars?" Billy echos._

_"On bikes. Like what the boys ride? When you slip or fall on a bike, you need to let go of the handlebars. Get off the bike. Otherwise the whole thing falls with you on it. If you're afraid to get hurt you wind up hurting yourself worse, falling."_

_Billy considers this. This is something that you learn, then. Letting go of the handlebars. Learning to fall._

_He doesn't quite know how that fits with him and Seven, though. He doesn't know how he's supposed to let Seven just walk away from him. Walk out of his life and choose something else. Leave him and destroy him in the process._

_Six hates the Lab, but he loves it, too. Like Papa. He loves him and he hates him. It is all there is, and everything else that exists outside of the Lab and Papa and and Seven and Six is a threat. _

_The kids are a threat. The world is a threat. A threat to him and Seven and stability and order and the only kind of family and home Six has ever known. The threat is that he loses Papa, and his room, his life, and Seven. _

_These things, what Max is talking about - they mean that Papa will never again tell him what to do. He will never teach him how things work. He will never give him that hard-won praise. _

_They mean that he must go forth into a strange land where all the rules are different, where all the old things are made new._

_They mean that Seven is taken away, taken somewhere else. They mean that Seven is seen and touched and loved by others. _

_They mean that Six has to share._

_A threat._

_He understands that. He does. Williams came today to make sure, but..._

_He doesn't really understand... doesn't know when all these things stopped being as scary as they used to be. When the world and everything in it stopped being a threat. _

_When the promise, the possibilities... when they came into focus. When they seemed reachable - touchable._

_(It’ll be theirs, then - his and Seven’s. They’ll make it their space full of their dreams, and their joys will be doubled because they will be shared.)_

_"When we find Seven..." Max pauses, and then plows ahead, brave as ever, even though her voice is tentative, small. "I know you can't, like, live here with me, but... maybe you could still come over? We'll find a place for you to stay and then you could still come over when mom and Neil are gone?_ _You and Seven? We could watch movies. I... I could paint your nails, if you want."_

_A threat, Billy thinks. It's a threat because it's a promise I don't know will be kept. They're offering me this thing and I don't know if it's the truth. _

_I only know the one thing, really._

_"I love him," Billy says, and the word has so much power in it that he again feels like that ought to be enough to silence all the doubts. "I do."_

_"What's love to you?" Max asks._

_Love is Seven. Seven is love. He can't explain it. He never could. _

_Doubt eats him up inside._

_"I think," Max says after a long silence, "there's a difference between being safe and being happy. And I think sometimes you can get stuck in a place where you can't always tell the difference between happy and unhappy anymore. And love is wanting someone to be happy, even if it hurts you."_

_"I don't know happy," Billy grunts, refocusing on the TV though his mind is somewhere far away. "Safe is important."_

_"Yeah," Max agrees. "But is it enough?"_

**Then**

_Six sits in the van. Seven is next to him, bound, a bag over his head. He was _ _unconscious before but he is coming around now. He isn't making a sound, though. He isn't reaching out. His breathing is ragged and he is riding out the waves of crushing agony all on his own. _

_He is giving no indication that he is awake. He doesn't show the pain and despair he is in._

_Six knows anyway. A sixth sense. _

_Because it's Seven, and Six may not be able to read minds but he always knows and has always known what Seven is feeling. Seven is his husband. Even when Six doesn't listen, even when he doesn't want to know, he knows._

_He knows what Seven thinks. He knows what he feels._

_And there is no escaping it or avoiding it now. Not anymore. You can't choose to be blind to it anymore. No more running, no more hiding. Not for either of them._

_Six loves Seven. He always has, and he always will._

_And Six knows he has lost Seven for good._

**Now**

Brenner presses the button on the remote again. 

Nothing happens.

He presses it again, harder, thinks maybe the thing is stuck somehow, and this time there is a scream... but not from Steve.

Brenner turns to see Six and the Techs guarding him. One Tech is on the ground, passed out, and the other is shrieking as Six pushes a glowing, fiery fist against the older man's chest and then picks him up and throws him against the far wall.

The black box that had been causing so much damage to Steve has a hole in it now, a hand-shaped gap melted through the plastic and wiring. 

Six turns and the look on his face is like nothing that Brenner and Steve - arguably the two people in the world who know this boy best - have ever seen before.

Six has hurt people before. He has killed people before. He has been hurt himself in so many ways, time and time again. Deep and personal hurts.

Sometimes he rages and sometimes he acts out, but usually... almost always... he maintains something like cold calm. Distance. Holding certain things away from himself. Life for him has always been a series of calculations - how to minimize hurt and maximize satisfaction. How to best survive.

Brenner has shown him horrors. He broke down the child's instinctual reactions until this tiny victim could do nothing but stand and watch, fingers twitching, emotions buried under the facade of indifference. Until the boy accepted the overwhelming amount of pain doled out to him... until the boy learned to accept it, and even thank his tormentor for it.

The gift Papa gave his son is this tragic blankness that masquerades as strength. This self-destruction that claims to be self-preservation.

Steve - Seven is also unwittingly guilty. As the focal point of all Six's feelings, all his love, all his hate, all his need, Seven has become a shadow self without which Six cannot function as a whole person. Seven is his heart, the best parts of himself, the pressure point he needs to protect always.

_"There is no 'me' without you!"_

But Seven is gone now. Seven said 'I'm Steve and I cook for myself and sleep when I want and touch myself in the dark and it is good'. Seven is gone now.

And, really, he was never truly Six's to begin with. You can't possess a person completely, no matter how hard you try.

What remains?

_Torn_, is the first word that springs to Steve's mind upon seeing Six's face, only that one doesn't quite work here. 'Torn' implies something being torn in two, caught in the middle, fought over, unable to choose a side to land on. This isn't that.

This is more like the shattered, shredded pieces that remain after a thing is torn... the wrecked, useless tatters left over when the fighting is done. This is a decision made, a battle that is over.

_Insubordination_, Brenner thinks, and while he is not entirely right, he is not entirely wrong either.

The boy's expression is raw, open, full of pain and longing and something else. Something glitters in his eyes, something wild and almost inhuman. Like grief, and like the freedom that comes in grief, in letting go, in the end. The fire that lives in him burns; it is there at the surface now.

The look on his face hardens, solidifies into something more.

Into the look of a man who has nothing to lose.

“Six,” Brenner says.

It's all he says - almost like an afterthought, a habitual process of naming, of bestowing identity - before he moves. His fingers flash to the control button on his remote, the emergency trigger for the ankle band all Numbers must wear.

He presses it, looks for the expected shudder, the pain, the collapse, the submission.

Nothing happens.

The blinking light isn't on Six’s ankle. That evil eye that keeps him under control… it isn’t there anymore.

They brought them right to the Lab, took them straight to Brenner. They forgot to check that he was still wearing it and, of course, he isn't. The band still sits in pieces on Hopper's kitchen table. They never replaced it. It never occurred to them that they might need to check... that this child soldier would ever disobey.

Just a typical government fuck-up.

“Billy,” Steve whispers, looking up at a Six who is not Six anymore.

He has transformed into someone standing tall and strong and furious and fast.

A young man who is angry.

A young man who is righteous.

“Papa,” says Billy, voice cold.

Flames climb up Brenner’s legs in an instant, and the old man lets out a noise… not a shriek, exactly, but something between a shriek and a moan. The fire burns - it hurts. Papa smells his clothes and his flesh burning.

He makes a noise of bewildered terror, of sheer shock that such a thing could be happening to him. In all of his wildest dreams and darkest nightmares, somehow the possibility of his own playthings, his own weapons being turned against him never crossed his mind.

The son kills the father. Prometheus steals the fire.

Time slows, comes to a stand-still, and then speeds up again.

Suddenly everyone is moving.

Papa stumbles towards Billy - determined, it seems, to stop him with his bare hands if necessary.

However, before he can take more than a few steps Steve howls with a furious rage that bubbles up and out, a rage born of his pain and frustration. The box and the limits it imposed on Steve are gone now, destroyed by Billy, and just like that his power finally finds an open valve and spirals out.

Brenner is thrown backwards against the wall, a flying fireball. Light bulbs on the ceiling shatter and someone, somewhere, is yelling.

The gateway pulses, groans. Concrete crumbles away as Steve's rage feeds the force keeping the doorway open. The entrance to the other world widens, but nobody in that room will notice until it is too late.

Chaos reigns as the remaining Techs oscillate between Billy, Steve, and Brenner, unsure where to go first.

“Williams!” Brenner yelps weakly as he crumbles, bruised and burning onto the floor, still frantically trying to put himself out as fire engulfs his lower half. He lets out a scream of frustration and rolls on the ground.

For a moment, Steve is confused, thinks Brenner is yelling to ‘William’. It's both right and wrong somehow - he never calls Six anything besides Six, and William is a long-form name for Billy… not a nickname, not…

But it is Williams the Tech, Agent Williams, with his dull light brown hair and unreadable gray eyes, nondescript yet etched into Steve’s memory as the man who pushed his pants down and touched him with demanding, naked want.

Billy, it seems, remembers him too, because he turns and sends flash of fire towards the man with every intention to taking him down...

...But the fire stalls. It seems to collapse and reform itself mid-air, and then turn and fly back to Billy as if thrown by some invisible force. He’s too stunned to move out of the way – the flames hit him, and he falls, struggling for control. He hits the ground, flailing.

Steve lets out an inarticulate cry, but before he can move forward, before he can tug against the straps binding him to the chair, the wall behind the Bathtub lets out a loud hum and shudders violently. The colors change and the sound rises and everyone freezes and stares as a light glows from the crack between worlds.

Steve doesn't look - not with his eyes. He closes them. He pushes his mind out, out past the barrier, and he _looks_.

He sees. 

He sees what is coming.

His heart rises to his throat and his eyes snap open in horror.

"Run," he whispers, a brief moment before the first of the monsters rip through the gateway and into the waiting world.

The rag-tag troop finally find the installation, but they don't go though the front gate.

Too many guards. Too many guns.

Max swings around, goes off-road. Hopper sees God several times as she narrowly misses several trees and a rather large bush.

When she finds a weak spot in the chain link fence behind the Lab she doesn't bother slowing down. She floors it and takes Hopper's truck right through the barrier - towards the Lab. Towards their missing friends.

Lucas screams in the backseat.

The lights in the windows go out and alarms ring within the tall, imposing building.

The room floods with Techs, and just as quickly it floods with monsters of the more Lovecraftian kind.

It is carnage.

Bullets fly and bodies fly. Steve sees Six - Billy - drop to the ground and throw a blinding fireball at a monster consuming a hapless Tech, its gaping maw wide and terrible. He doesn't know which one of the two targets Billy is aiming for, and it hardly matters.

The other boy looks up and makes eye contact for just a moment before a solid mass of something or someone hits Steve head on and knocks him to the ground. The force of the blow loosens the restraints holding one of his arms while nearly breaking the bones in the other.

Steve screams in pain and fear, kicking and lashing out, but his powers seem evaporate as confusion descends - he cannot use them to escape or save himself now. Instead, he experiences a kind of sensory overload on top of his lingering shakiness from the torture, and all he can see is the blur of colors and sound.

He's got no anchor, no balance. His psyche teeters, threatens to shatter under the weight of all this stimuli, none of which he can grasp or process.

The battle roars and Steve does his best not to shake apart under the weight of it. One arm is free and he tugs frantically at the other.

He looks up just in time to see a familiar, horrible face coming towards him, slow and steady.

A face he saw in a nightmare. A face he saw in the Bathtub.

The face opens, a flower full of teeth.

Gunshots. Fire.

The face turns away.

The strap on his wrist comes free.

He's dragged up, off the ground.

Up and away.

There are arms around him - arms wrapped around him, leading him away.

Alarms go, loud and inescapable. The regular lights go off and the emergency lights come on, and it is just familiar enough to Steve to make it all the more strange. An echo of a memory, and yet he is able to process almost nothing of what is going on.

He is in the middle of it all now... and then he isn't. 

Now he is at the very edge of the fray.

He is leaving the room. He is being taken from the room.

Doors swing shut and the sights and sounds are cut off.

Steve thrashes against the hands holding him in place, dragging him away to who-knows-where. It is an instinctual reaction - all his rational thoughts have been stripped away by fear. He is scared and vulnerable and nothing good ever happens when strangers put their hands on him.

The grip is iron, however, and though he fights he can't break free. Exhaustion and the adrenaline dump are leaving him shaky and weak-limbed. He doesn't even think to read the stranger's intentions, can't focus enough to use his powers effectively, to probe the man's mind.

His journey ends all too soon, anyway.

Almost like they hadn't gone very far at all. 

Almost like Steve is, here at the end, at the crucial moment, powerless.

He is shoved into a disused room, a smaller testing room, and is suddenly alone with his attacker.

Steve gasps, struggling to calm down and think rationally, stumbling into a corner and pushing himself against the wall in a vain attempt to put some distance between himself and his captor. He turns slightly as the lights come on and he can see...

Williams.

Agent Williams, Steve knows from experience, has a gun and most likely a taser tucked away on his person somewhere, though he isn’t using either one at the moment. In fact, he isn't looking at Steve at all, doesn't seem to see him as a threat to be contained.

Instead, the older man storms around the room, barricading the door and checking the exits. Once he satisfies himself that the room is secure, he huffs and turns. In a fit of frustration or anger or simple adrenaline he shoves a small table in the center of the room out of the way. It tips over, landing on the floor with a bang. 

Steve lets out a ragged breath and, to his horror, it comes out as a weak whine. The noise finally snags the Tech’s attention and Steve can’t help but flinch when the man’s cool gaze is directed at him.

It is like he is a child again, like he is Seven again, like he never left the Lab, like he still lives trapped in the endless cycle of failure and suffering. This last round of torture almost killed him, and he is not laughing now. He is still terrified of the men in suits, of the punishments they dish out. 

Of the specific kind of punishment Williams could inflict, and almost did that day when everything changed.

The Tech turns and strides towards him and Steve presses against the wall as if it might absorb and protect him. His legs give out under him and he slides down the cool surface until he is sitting on the ground, curled up and shaking and terrified. 

Brenner just tried to kill him. He just saw a man get shredded by a endless rows of teeth. Six is still out there and he is nothing but fire, fire, fire.

And now Steve is alone here, with _him_. With the hands that hurt and take.

Williams kneels on the ground in front of him – too close, it’s not safe – and pauses. In the relative quiet of this brief hesitation, Steve forces himself to open the eyes he hadn’t realized he’d shut and take in the man in front of him.

Williams’ face is soft, warm, and completely wrong in Steve’s mind, the opposite of what it should be. Williams is always a blank slate, smooth and emotionless and hard as stone. There is no reason why the Tech should be looking at him with tenderness, but he is.

Steve remembers a day long ago when the man came and gave him a gift, a small comfort. His skin crawls as a phantom memory of greedy hands creeps into his consciousness.

After a brief moment, Williams reaches out. Steve flinches back again, but the Tech only gently brushes a thick lock of hair off Steve’s face. His hand lingers a moment longer than necessary, the back of his fingers dancing down Steve’s temple and cheek.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” the Tech says, and that doesn’t make sense to Steve either. “You’re safe now.”

Steve struggles, as he often does in moments like this, moments of confusion and terror and stress, to find the words he wants to say, the correct ones, the ones that will fix things.

The word that does come out speaks to the one overriding thought on his mind.

“Six?” He whispers.

Williams’ gaze hardens and he draws his hand away. The wrong word, apparently, but Steve can’t bring himself to care. None of this makes sense, and if Williams is unhappy with Steve then the boy is honestly at a loss for how to fix it.

Rather than lash out, however, Williams only leans back on his heels and smooths out the lines in his face. He looks calm, almost thoughtful, though Steve still struggles to read him.

He whips off his suit-jacket, and when he does Steve feels an acidic mix of terrible resignation curdling around the fear inside of him.

He knows how this story ends.

Williams doesn’t undress further, however. He doesn’t touch Steve. He doesn't grab and take and break.

Instead, he rolls up a shirtsleeve to reveal his right forearm.

Steve’s eyes are drawn down, and they widen as he reads what is written there.

**001**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I have no explanation for the delay between chapters except *gestures vaguely at everything* but I am absolutely committed to finishing this work! I just have honestly not had the time and/or the emotional and mental energy to do so between one thing and another.
> 
> Genuinely, though, what an exhausting timeline this is... what the literal hell? Meurghhh...
> 
> You guys are amazing stardust people and I hope that you are healthy and well in every possible way! Reading and writing has kept me sane these last few weeks and that's basically all down to you amazing peeps - please drop me a line and say hi, and I'm sending hugs and love and chocolate and wine and kitten memes to everyone <3 <3 <3


	9. It's my desire

**Then**

_"Papa?"_

_"Yes, Seven?"_

_"Where is love?"_

_A silence, thick and heavy, stretches out between them. Seven can feel it like a physical thing._

_"... Where did you hear that word?"_

_(The word, the word, a forbidden word, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was... but there are no gods here.)_

_"He said it. He said we're 'in love'. Where is that? We were just in the normal Testing Room when he said it, so I don't know how we could be 'in love' and in the Testing Room at the same time."_

_There is another pause, briefer this time._

_"Six said this?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Where did Six hear it?"_

_"I... I think from someone. But I hear it too. In other people's heads and in my dreams..."_

_"Seven. I've warned you about telling lies."_

_(Once upon a time there was a naughty little boy...)_

_Another pause. A strategic retreat and redirect._

_"Where is it? Is it another room? Like the Nursery?"_

_Papa sighs inwardly, leans back in his chair, folds his hands. He watches the pale little boy with the unruly brown hair - the small, fragile, unusual, disappointing child - as he draws nonsensical things on a piece of paper._

_Giant machines and monsters with tentacles and bearded men wearing hats - and no good explanation for any of them. No answers as to how and why._

_Jumbled and useless._

_(Make sense, damn you. Fall in line. Make sense.)_

_And yet, he must tread carefully here. He is not a father in any true sense of the word, but he is Papa and he is in charge of the moral development of these Experiments._

_Whatever he says to Seven will be repeated to Six, and his words could impact both boys in fundamental ways. One never can tell what a child will forget or remember, what will shape a human being as they grow into their adult responsibilities._

_(Not human. They're not human. Not really.)_

_A wrong move now could be disastrous, could undermine all his schemes and plans. This word, this emotion, this idea could destroy everything. Everything._

_Rebellions... revolutions have been inspired by less powerful words than the one Seven is asking about._

_"Love is a feeling," Brenner says slowly. "An emotion. Not a place."_

_Seven blinks. "Like happy and sad?"_

_"Yes. To be 'in love' means to feel love strongly."_

_"What...?" Seven starts and then stalls. Brenner watches him._

_This is a new thing. A new thing Seven does. Seven is learning to keep parts of himself hidden, is learning that if he asks certain questions or says certain things he will be punished. Worse, he will be ridiculed, told that he is stupid, dismissed as a weak and pathetic fool._

_Seven is learning, is teaching himself how to function in the world. Brenner is interested to see if his fear of humiliation will outweigh his curiosity in this instance._

_It does. Seven drops his gaze and continues coloring in his picture, but he still speaks the question, soft and casual._

_"What is it?" he asks. "How do you know if you have it?"_

_"Well," Brenner says, taking the pedagogical tone he often adopts when he is hedging or manipulating. "What do you and Six feel for each other? You know the emotion spectrum. Where does Six fall on that for you?"_

_Typical strategy, answering a question with another question. And the so-called 'emotion spectrum' - that's an old, reliable learning tool, a handy chart designed rather like a color wheel and complete with all the emotions Numbers are permitted to feel. Some Tech, a behavioral psychologist named Frank, came up with it in his spare time._

_Sad, Angry, Confused, Hurt (subdivided by Tired, Hungry, and Pain), Strong, Happy. Six colored sections on a thick piece of paper. The Techs would hold it up and the Numbers could point. Clean and simple._

_And 'Love' : an emotion conspicuous in its absence from the list._

_(No words needed. Make sense. Fall in line.)_

_Humoring Brenner's empirical query, Seven answers as best he can._

_"It's not... not really on the spectrum. It's kind of all of them sometimes. Happy, mostly. When I see him it's happy. And strong. Like I'm bigger with him there. But also sad and angry sometimes. Hurt a lot of the time." _

_"Pain?"_

_"Yes. Inside. Happy but also pain. Confusing."_

_Seven clams up then, perhaps sensing that he has given something important and precious away, turned his feelings into a weapon that the older man will certainly use against him._

_Against him and Six, today and tomorrow and for days and days and days to come._

_It might have gone on forever, indefinitely, but then one day something tied up in Seven's complicated understanding of 'love' snapped and caught fire and refused to be denied any more. _

_(Because of 'love', he ran. One day, years from now, Seven will run. He will run right out of here. He will slip out of everyone's grasp and he will never look back.)_

_Or perhaps, Brenner muses as he watched the boy, Seven's sudden reticence simply means that he really does lack the vocabulary to explain it further._

_Nothing to worry about - it's a complex emotion, after all. Love. Vague and fragile. If you keep the concept limited and ill-defined, keep the emotional maturity of the test subjects at a child-like level, you likely won't need to lay any more groundwork with it. _

_(Brenner doesn't know, he can't see the future, all he knows is that Seven is stupid and that Six will need to be punished for this, and that love is a game, a tool, a weak point to be exploited. In short, he knows nothing. He can't see the future.)_

_Satisfied that he's gotten all the leverage he needs, Brenner indulges in a momentary act of mercy. He further simplifies the new vocabulary word for this strange, powerless child._

_"It's need, Seven. That is all love is. It's a need born of weakness, and it isn't something one keeps indefinitely. Not without paying for it." _

_(Love is not for monsters.)_

**Now**

"Where is he?!"

Billy is having a very bad day.

First his night in the woods, then his failed mission, then Seven, Seven, Seven, and Steve, the new pain and promise that is Steve.

And then... and then... betrayal. His own betrayal of Seven and the world's answering betrayal of him. Watching the man he loves get ripped to shreds by Brenner's Black Box.

Making a choice. The buzzing in his ears and the rage and the despair and the sheer desperation - _make it stop, make it STOP_ \- and it was his own voice in his head screaming at him but it was also Seven's, and if he hadn't known better he'd have said that was one of Steve's powers, a newfound ability to throw himself into someone else's head so hard and fast that his thoughts and feelings become their own.

Maybe that's true, maybe that is a secret power Steve has, but if he has it then it only ever works on Bi- on Six, and then it is only because Six is already so tangled up and lost in Ste- in Seven it would be impossible now to ever free himself. Seven's pain sang out as if all the moments when Six had tried and failed to protect his lover were echoing in one terrible symphony of wrong choices.

_I didn’t save him. He begged and screamed and I didn’t help him. I just stood there._

_Let me go. Let me go. I'm Steve. Let me go._

_If you love me, let me go._

_I don't know how._

_I know how._

And then Six had made his choice. A new one. A beautiful and terrible one. He became Billy. He destroyed the Box. 

Barely thinking, barely feeling - not processing anything but the bottomless rage born of bottomless fear born of bottomless need. Brenner stood and suddenly he was Papa but he was also everything Billy, with all the pain and rage of Six, hated, and then he was also just nothing more or less than some obstacle in the way. Standing between them and... and what? And everything. Billy barely even saw Steve. 

Just saw the flames crawling up Brenner's legs, the slow and painful kind of burning. Williams loomed, another Tech, the worst Tech, the one who hurt, hurt, hurt them, and Billy, enraged, wanted to hurt him too but then... then the fire failed.

Then everything fell apart again.

Then monsters came, both human and inhuman. Then bullets. Then fire, more fire, fire that came from him and also that came from shorting electrics and chemical spillages. Fire that illuminated the nightmares pouring out of the wall. 

In the midst of the chaos he looked up and Steve was suddenly gone.

Gone, gone, _gone_, and he needs to find him.

Then fighting.

Then running. 

Then fighting.

Then running.

Running down the halls, away from the monsters. Running into this hallway. Down that one. Where is he going? Panic and fear and the overwhelming surge of fire seeking release, running nowhere except...

He knows where he is. He is in the hallway that looks like so many others except that in this hallway there is a secret. The room Seven can never see.

He's running.

And then, completely by accident or as part of some cosmic joke, he runs straight into them.

The sirens are still going off, ringing loud and echoing in the Lab's hallways, and Billy feels like he might be going deaf. The noise is making his head pound, drowning out coherent thoughts. The lights are still flashing. The rush of terror-fueled adrenaline is tapering off now and with the blood loss he's suffered after being winged in the side by a pair of monstrous jaws he is starting to feel weak and nauseous. 

"Where is he?!"

In spite of this, he hears the shouted, repeated question perfectly well. He hears the rage behind it, the desperation.

"Where is he?!"

He understands the double meaning, the implication of the words. He ran but he didn't get away. He's alive, but he doesn't know where the other half of his soul is. 

He ran towards his worst fear, not away from it.

Most of the Techs are dead or missing or just plain hiding now. He, too, was caught in the middle of a blind escape attempt, fleeing the monsters still mostly confined to the main lab space where the gateway to another world pulses and widens more and more with each passing moment.

The last thing he saw as the doors closed behind him was the weird light refracting through the half-rebuilt Bathtub, illuminating a dog-like creature with a face like a flower made of teeth as it ripped the lungs out of a Tech.

He ran, stumbling, almost unaware. He followed the twists and turns of a place he's known all his life.

A terrible maze, and he's the rat, and _why_ did he turn down this hallway?

This isn't where Seven/Steve is. He knows it's not. Can't be. 

Not this hallway. Not these rooms. 

Not these rooms.

Why did he run down here, to the place he swore Seven would never see? Seven wouldn't be down here. Not here. _Brenner promised that if Six was good..._

No Techs down here. No monsters. Nothing like that.

Still, he sees many sets of eyes watching him.

Judging him. Cornering him. Waiting for an answer to the question screamed at him again and again. The only question that matters.

"Where, you son of a bitch!?!"

Billy raises a burning hand dripping with flames and slams it against the old cop's chest. Hopper grunts and loosens his grip on Billy, who slides down the wall he'd been pinned to by the other man as he was interrogated. He lands heavily on shaky legs, and it is only through sheer force of will that he remains upright.

They found him, they grabbed him, they got the jump on him, but he is a feral animal and he will not be caged for long. Cages are death, and now that he is out of his he will never go back inside and they can't make him, _can't make him_....

The older man staggers back, the pain from the burn and the earlier bullet wound knocking the wind out of him. Billy doesn't know how the man is still standing and is honestly somewhat impressed, although he suspects the man's extremely dilated pupils may have something to do with it.

Either way, he does not have the chance to press his advantage. 

An invisible force throws him back against the wall. He slides a little bit down before he is stopped, held in place by an enemy he cannot fight in this position.

It was a shock to find them here, obviously. The last people he'd ever expected to see stumbling down the dimly-lit hallways of this linoleum-tiled hell. And yet here they are, confused and horrified and determined. Small, wounded, confused base-line humans all lined up to march into the unknown. 

Staring at him with condemnation in their eyes, and like he has all the answers to all the questions they don't know how to ask.

Max, Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Will. The big cop, Hopper, Steve's new friend.

The one that's like him, the little Number. She's the one pinning him in place now, holding him with her powers. He can feel the force behind it, the resonating echo that matches his own. 

She is wide-eyed and grim-faced. He should throw fire at her but he holds off for a brief moment, studying her, strangely fascinated.

He has never been much interested in the other Numbers, with the obvious exception of Seven. He feels like he might remember her from before - an echo, a shadow, a dream. A face in a room, an afternoon playing with soft toys, a deliberate choice not to get invested emotionally in someone who was only going to be taken away again.

Steve explained who she is, of course, but he feels like he has his own memory of her... of screams down a hallway. Of all the loudspeakers in the Lab suddenly regurgitating a strange language unprompted. Of Brenner's voice proudly identifying his favorites, his perfect children.

And she is the reason for the ankle band. She's the one who got away. The strange beast in their menagerie, the one - the only one, maybe - whose power rivals Six's for it's sheer destructive quality. Steve thought he opened the gateway, and he did, but she's the one who _created_ it, who first stepped inside. 

With her brown curls and her determined glare and her worried frown she reminds him of Seven. A younger Seven, unbroken, full of righteousness, carrying the whole world on her back.

She is so much like Seven it hurts.

But as he hangs there, his whole body pressed against the wall, the older boy look more closely. He looks with the special sensitivity all Numbers feel when they are with each other, that strange and profound hyper-awareness they all share when near the only true siblings they will ever have. He could pick the single Number hiding in a crowded room and _know_.

He looks and he sees that, underneath the surface, she is actually nothing like Seven. She has that steel rod of nihilistic determination in her spine, that inky black despair, that willingness to be cruel, to be vicious, to destroy everything, including herself, in order to win. She hates it like he hates it, but she still has it in her, just like he does.

Seven doesn't have that. She's nothing like Seven deep down.

She's exactly like Six.

"Sister," Six hisses. He bares his teeth in a feral grin, blood from his mouth staining the white. 

_A seething, dark, furious thing, a gaping maw that wants to tear everything apart. Destruction, and self-destruction. The willingness (need. desire. compulsion.) to rip out your fingernails, let the blood pour out of your nose and ears, break every bone in your body one by one...as long as that means you keep going. As long as the mission is complete. Rip yourself to pieces, leave parts of yourself behind in a long, bloody trail of shredded flesh and love, but don't stop, don't stop, don't stop._

_Just like me. _

Six claws his way out of the iron bars of silence and doesn't hesitate when speaking the word like Steve did the first time he met El. He doesn't need to search out and find the right vocabulary term. He doesn't say it with gentle awe. He senses a mirror image, a kindred spirit, and it doesn't bring out his better side.

Instead, Six does what he always does when confronted with power - he moves towards it, tried to claim it, tries to turn it back on itself so it can't hurt him.

She glares back at him and lifts her chin up. A thin line of blood drips from her left nostril.

Their gazes are locked on each other, a silent duel. His grin widens at what he sees.

"Sister," he murmurs again, the word heavy with meaning.

_Wicked little sister._

He just needs to flick his wrist and the fire is there, hot and burning as if it hasn't failed him over and over again today. Today of all days it has let him down repeatedly, and wouldn't Papa be ashamed?

Not there when he needed it, when Steve was there and waiting and the only thing standing between them and freedom was some stupid Tech - but now, when he is lashing out, the rage and fire comes.

He throws it at her, a speeding fireball, and though it doesn't do too much damage - he isn't trying to hurt anyone really, he just wants to get away - it is enough to make her lose her concentration long enough to release him.

He stumbles down and is about to run again - where he's running to doesn't matter, not when the whole world is crumbling and there are monsters lurking around every corner - when the cop, regaining his lost energy, roars and tackles him.

The force is enough to send them spiraling out of control, stumbling down the hallway. Six staggers, the kids are yelling, and there is too much chaos and momentum to stop. He flings his body in some direction, any direction, trying to break free from that intense grip, but he doesn't quite manage it. Instead, the force of his and Hopper's combined weight is redirected and before Six can stop it they are hitting a solid barrier and breaking through a door.

They land on the floor and for a moment both men lay stunned and silent on the floor, wrapped up in a parody of an embrace. Six is on his back, and he blinks, looking up at the ceiling and recognizing the eerie greenish light reflected there almost instantly.

No. Please. Not that door. Not this room.

He knows this room. 

_Papa holds his hand, an anchor point. All touch is so carefully regulated here, but for this particular moment Papa holds his hand. It is strange because touch is a reward, and as far as Six knows he has been bad. He is expecting punishment. _

_He said something to Seven he shouldn't have. He told him about an unauthorized word._

_Papa holds his hand. His grip is firm yet not painful - Six knows he is can't escape. That possibility doesn't even cross his mind. Papa's skin feels soft and dry against his own._

_A Tech opens the door._

Six has stopped breathing, his eyes fixed on the ceiling while Hopper, jarred by the pain and the sudden end of forward motion, stares dumbly at the view in front of him.

The quiet only lasts for a moment before the kids tumble through the broken door and into the room after them. There is a chattering outburst of sound and then they freeze, too. They see and they freeze, too.

"What is this?" Hopper blinks in shock as he rolls off Six and surveys the contents of the room. "What the fuck is this?"

_A Tech opens the door and Six cries out, tugs the hand caught in Brenner's grasp, tries to run... can't run..._

_Can't run..._

_“The world is full of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We need to protect him… even from himself. Especially from himself. Otherwise he will keep getting hurt.”_

There is no torture device in this room - at least nothing like those devices most commonly used on Numbers. There are no electrodes, no gurneys, no Black Boxes. There is a table in the center, a workspace. There is nothing terrible or unusual about that.

The worst tools in the room merely resemble those that might belong to any average taxidermist.

Six doesn't look at the room but he sees Hopper's face hovering above him and he knows what is making the old cop's eyes widen in horror, what is making his mouth go pinched and his hands shake. 

Will lets out a weak cry and Eleven echoes it.

There are huge jars in this room. Some of them are nearly as tall as Hopper. They eerily suggest smaller versions of the Bathtub, glass tubes filled with a viscous liquid.

Five in total, that Six could recall. Five jars. One, two, three, four, five.

_And Six makes six._

He has not visited this room for a long time, though. There might be more jars now. They might have gotten rid of one.

He's afraid to look. He's afraid that the number of jars might have changed. He's afraid that they might be arranged differently now.

He's afraid that the... the things inside the jars... that they might have moved.

He sees them in dreams sometimes. Seven isn't the only one with nightmares. In his dreams they stare at him with milky, unseeing eyes. In his dreams they stare and then they move. They are still, still as death, and then they... move. They move.

The stunned horror in the room is too thick and heavy and before it gets worse Six forces himself to roll over onto his front and push himself up. He goes to his knees and waits until he is certain they will support him, and then climbs to his feet. He takes a deep breath and lifts his gaze to survey the room.

The five original jars are still there, but now there are three more then there were the last time he came to this room - eight of them now, and the sight of them and the knowledge that there are more makes Six gag. They stand with a strange air of permanence, like statues, and are still filled to the brim with a thick greenish-clear preservative keeping the specimens intact.

"What... what are they?" someone asks - one of the kids, or Hopper, Six doesn't know. Barely hears it. Just recognizes that he is being asked a question, a different question than the one from before.

Different, yet related somehow, intertwined in his head. Losing Seven and looking at the things floating in these jars - it's all tied together for him.

_Where is he?_

_What is this?_

_What are (were) they?_

_Papa's room of horrors. His collections of freaks and failures._

"Others," Six forces out in a weak and strangled voice, his face a stony grimace of fear and pain. "Numbers."

Dead eyes stare out at the assembled party and Eleven lets out a low moan of terror and grief.

"What happened?" she asks in a voice veering sharply into a wail. _"What happened...?!"_

Six lurches forward, drawn to the jars by the same familial bond, that underlying telepathic link, that sensitivity that drew him to Eleven earlier. Though dead and dissected and barely recognizable as human, they are still his brothers and sisters. They are him, and he is just like them and he needs to be with them, to keep them safe and whole even though they are long past the point of needing his protection.

He moves too fast, stumbles, is saved from falling by a strong hand gripping his arm, and it is an echo of his memories, too... there is another Papa here and he is holding Six upright as he looks and looks and looks.

Helpless. Powerless. And Papa is holding him up.

"Easy, kid," Hopper murmurs. His grip is firm yet gentle, and he is reluctant to let Six go but he releases the boy for a moment when he pulls away, walks towards the jars as if hypnotized.

"It's what they do..." Six murmurs, voice strangely drained of emotion as he sinks into a memory. "It's what they do to the ones that aren't born right. If they aren't special, or they don't survive, or if they're more useful under a microscope. Weak ones, damaged ones, ones so different that they couldn't be allowed to live."

Twisted. Wrong. Broken. Other. Even in death they can't escape. Flayed open and preserved, laid bare and studied. Still trapped by Papa's gaze.

Belonging to everyone and no one.

Max is shaking, making a soft, wounded sound. Eleven is staggering after Six, also pulled into the orbit of these strange corpses, murdered and buried here in glass tombs. She reaches out a shaking hand. Will looks like he might faint and Mike and Lucas both feel sick. Dustin is crying, though he doesn't notice he is doing so.

"He brought me here," Six continues after a long moment of deathly silence punctuated only by the continued pulse of alarms in the hallway.

"Papa. Just once. He said he'd take Seven away if he became too much trouble to take care of. If he kept running away and being defiant and using up resources without giving anything back in return. He said if I didn't use Seven right and if Seven wasn't useful, he'd bring him here. He'd take him apart and use his pieces for... for...experiments. We're all just experiments. For a higher cause."

Six sucks in a sharp breath and drops his gaze, leaning forward until his forehead touches the glass barrier of one of the jars. He lifts a shaking hand and places it on the tomb of his dead and mutilated sibling, one he could not save. Blind eyes look out at him, a mouth with missing teeth offers a sad, frozen grin, dark hair frames an almost-familiar face.

"It's important to be useful," he whispers. "It's important to be useful."

"Hey..."

Someone is tugging on Six's shoulder and it makes him want to scream.

He doesn't want to be touched. He hates being touched.

No.

No. That isn't right.

He loves being touched, he needs it, craves it. It almost hurts how badly he wants a gentle touch and it's been so long, it's been weeks, and even longer if we don't count Steve and...

He wants to cry. He wants to cry.

"He put him in a jar anyway," Six gasps, a ragged half-sob that is dangerously close to spilling over into a mournful keening sound. "The Bathtub. He broke his promise. He put my Seven in a jar anyway, took my husband away..."

He wants to cry. He's crying.

"Hey... breathe, kid. Okay? Come away. Come away now."

The words are spoken gently and Six obeys because that's what he does - he is fire and he is pain and he is defiance, but he also obeys because it is important to be useful. To be of use. 

To be used. He's here to be _used_...

Six is something to be used and he realizes he has fallen back into thinking of himself as Six without meaning to, and it almost doesn't matter because the truth is that he doesn't know how to be anything else, doesn't know how to be anything other than _useful_...

He's pulled into something like a hug and he is fighting it, he's struggling weakly but not enough, apparently, to dislodge the heavily wounded cop who is wrapping his big arms around the shaking Number.

"I'm sorry," Hopper says, and Six is sure that those are the words that he is supposed to be saying back, saying to all of them. Saying to Seven and to Steve, because he has failed them both. He has failed his dead brothers and sisters. He has failed Papa. He has failed himself.

He has failed everyone.

Small hands reach up and grab his shirt and Max is there, her red hair like fire. Eleven is there, burying her face in Hopper's girth, trying to shut out the horrors.

_Sisters._

Six stops struggling and just breathes.

He makes. Himself. Breathe.

Breathe.

"Billy..." Max murmurs.

The name clicks.

Billy breathes.

It's shaky but it gets the job done. His side hurts and he clings to the pain, uses it to wake himself up a bit. He also clings to Hopper, to Max, to a door that is cracked open ever-so-slightly, to a sliver of hope.

He experiences the clarity given to the desperate man, the drowning man, the man holding on by his fingernails. 

Hopper gives a pained grunt, almost a sigh, after a moment, and the reality comes crashing in. Billy doesn't fight it.

He feels himself go calm.

"We can't stay here," Mike pipes up, giving voice to Billy's own thoughts. "They'll be people coming, right?"

"Where's Steve?" Dustin asks, brow furrowed. "This place is the worst and we need to get out."

"Yeah, like, yesterday," Lucas concurs.

"Where is he? Let's just get him and go."

Billy is thrown back to a few days ago, to the first time he met these kids in the woods by their school. Then, as now, he's a cornered animal, and all eyes are on him, and he needs to make choices and spin a story. He needs to make the impossible work for him. 

"I don't know," Billy admits through gritted teeth, pulling away fully from the cop and wiping his face roughly with his hands. "He was here. Papa was killing him, but then I broke the Black Box. And then the wall opened up and the monsters came."

"So much to unpack there," Lucas murmurs.

"You don't know?" Max chimes in. "And... what monsters, what are you talking about?"

There is a roaring sound outside the room and down the hallway, a sound quickly followed by a terrible shrieking. Everyone turns to look, but thankfully nothing tears around the corner and reveals itself. Not yet, anyway.

Billy sucks in a breath and closes his eyes. They are wasting time. He wants Steve back, too... he needs to make them understand that.

"I want..." he starts, then stops.

It's good, not being held up anymore, but the offshoot of that is that he has lost some blood and as a consequence his legs have lost a lot of their strength.

They buckle. He goes to down to his knees, slow and easy, like he meant to do that all along. He stares down and breathes heavily and tries to pull it together.

The alarms, mercifully, are suddenly cut off. Some fail-safe or well-placed Tech has decided that everyone who needs to know about the emergency taking place in the Lab has already been informed. The lights keep flashing, but at least they can can hear themselves think now.

Billy tilts his head up and looks at the cop, the big cop who is not so big at the moment - he's reached down to help Billy, he's hovering above him, but he's also bleeding and panting and sweating heavily. The kids seem equally unsure.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and Six has always been one of those who, in the absence of better options, would willingly assume power and control of a situation that needed fixing. That hasn't changed now that he's Billy. A kind of training kicks in as he kneels, a sub-level programming deeply ingrained in his psyche. Something even Brenner never fully knew was there, something much more independent than Papa ever intended.

It is feeling of certainty anchored by one fundamental truth: he has been here before. This is nothing new. His whole life has been spent on his knees, face set against an impossible task.

He has done this before.

First things first - his old life is over now. No more Brenner. Even if he is still alive somehow, Billy can't go back that way, can't go back to serving as Six in silence. The Lab will not hold him any longer. There will be no more experiments, no more lessons, no more missions. 

He has seen these horrors, knows the truth behind the jars. The secret truth is that they all end up here in the end. They will end up here now unless he can stop it. Unless he can harness his power and put it to use.

It's important to be useful. Useful to himself, now. Useful to Steve.

_It's a threat because it's a promise I don't know will be kept. They're offering me this thing and I don't know if it's the truth._

_He must go forth into a strange land where all the rules are different, where all the old things are made new._

The everything familiar is gone now. Your choice, and it's final. Put it out of your head.

Refocus. Reevaluate. 

There is a new mission now.

This building is structurally sound, in theory. It is also vast and tangled. There are Techs, still. There are monsters. Hostiles are unquantified in terms of number and location and must be dealt with as they come. With extreme prejudice.

There are valuable things here, too. They must be collected.

In order of importance they are: 

1.) Seven (Steve)

2.) Other Numbers

3.) Brenner's files

He needs to think now. Priority one...

"He was there," Billy says, remembering. It was chaos and confusion, but he remembers Steve's face. Staring back, and then a blur of movement.

"Someone grabbed him," he says. "He was there and then he was moving. Someone had him. Someone was holding his arm."

"Who took him?" Hooper demands. "Who!?"

Billy sees the face in his mind's eye. He looks over at Eleven who is exhausted and bleeding and trying to locate Steve with her mind. She blinks blearily at him and then locks on, sees what Steve sees. Sees the familiar face. Sees what Billy remembers.

Billy knows who took Steve.

Steve reads the numbers. Three in a row in black ink, tattooed on the forearm.

He blinks. He wonders if he has tipped over some invisible line, if the visions in his head have finally melded fully with the waking world. He blinks again and stares.

The numbers remain in place, bold and unmistakable.

001.

The boy sees a shaky hand extended out towards the tattoo etched onto the Tech's… the_ NUMBER’_s arm, and it takes him a moment to realize that it is in fact his hand reaching out, moving almost of its own volition.

His fingers touch the tattoo, done in the same style as his own 007, the mark that damns him and defines him. He feels flesh, warm and solid, and the slight roughness of ink, and he knows that it's real, it's all real.

He isn't dreaming.

This is really happening.

He lets out a small, hiccuping breath and looks up, unable to hide the raw wonder filling him. 

Agent Williams is smiling. He is kneeling in front of Steve, his arm outstretched like an offering, and he is smiling. Steve thinks that, although he has known Williams for a long time, he has never seen the other man really smile before - the expression changes his whole face and it is almost like looking at a completely different person.

He is still himself, still ostensibly nondescript, an average man wearing an average suit - medium height, medium build, thin lips and ashy-brown hair. Maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, with a face that is almost ageless. A Tech like all the other Techs. A smudge of a person, blurry and insubstantial in Steve's mind.

And yet now he has new definition, new substance, a new identity. The tattoo changes everything.

Slate-gray eyes look down at Steve, warm and happy.

“You’re One?” Steve asks, stunned, using the wall at his back to push himself up into a sitting position. He can’t help but feel a grin quirking up his lips, answering Williams' clear pleasure at the revelation. A wild sense of kinship is blossoming in his chest, curiosity and familiarity all sparked at once. “You’re like me? You’re the... the _first_?”

Williams nods, his smile going wry and sad in a way that makes Steve ache in sympathy. The smile is a mirror reflecting back the secret, familiar pain felt by all Numbers, and Steve wonders how he ever could have mistaken this man for a Tech.

“The first," the Number says. "I am the very first. I was even earlier than Brenner. He became Papa when I was still a child.”

“You came from… from here? From the Lab?”

Williams - One - shakes his head.

“There was another before. Another Lab, not nearly as big or advanced as this. And another Papa. A real Papa - his name was Gottlieb. I was his first and only son, before government came. Before…” One gestures towards their surroundings, “… they built all this. To make more. More of us.”

"Who? The go - government?" 

"Hmm, yes. American."

Steve blinks at the word that isn't a word so much as an idea he has never really understood.

One searches for the words to explain.

"Everyone," he says finally. "Everyone out there," he waves one hand to indicate some place outside of the Lab, "they all have a system. Like in here - exactly the same. A Papa, and those under Papa... Techs. Different kinds of Techs. And those at the bottom. Numbers. The ones who take and the ones who provide. Rules. A place for everyone and everything."

"Yes," Steve agrees sadly.

"You remember learning about countries. You remember the stories about 'Us' and 'Them' and the great mission to save the country. Our country."

Yes, Steve does, although it always seemed like a silly story to him, one full of holes. And the moral of the story is that they still aren't free.

"Did you think they didn't have Papas out there?" One's voice is gentle, not-quite mocking. "Did you think they didn't have rules? They do. The ones even bigger and more powerful than Brenner - they are the government. They built all this. They made us to serve them, to protect them and fight for them. To be better than them, and less than them, too."

Steve has to force himself to breathe. He briefly thinks of Hopper and his uniform and his own description of his job - protecting good from bad. Law and order. A kind of authority that Steve didn't think to question.

"What is good and what is bad?" One asks, almost as if he can hear Steve's thoughts. "They decide. They are America, the government. They're the ones who came and turned this into... what it is."

Steve clenches his fist against his chest and then releases it again.

"They took you from your first Papa and then Brenner became Papa?" the boy echoes.

One nods, and Steve considers this. He doesn't know any Dr. Gottlieb but he can read between the lines. If he has never met this first Papa, then the first Papa must be long gone by now. 

Maybe there is an endless supply of back-up Brenners he doesn't know about.

"They brought you here?"

One nods again.

Steve’s face screws up thoughtfully. “And they let you out? You grew up here and became a Tech?”

The man shrugs.

"I wouldn't say they let me out," he says, his voice remarkably even. "I stay here, live here in the Lab. I eat and sleep and work here. My personal space isn't much bigger or different from the one you have. I have nothing besides what I am given by Papa - clothes and guns and a wallet which I return to him when the missions are completed. So I can't use it without authorization. When there is a mission, or if I want to make a personal request, I go to him and he gives me what I need... if he thinks I need it. It is the standard procedure.

"Or..." One grins with vague humor, slightly unsettling "...it used to be."

Used to be. Yes. Because Papa caught fire and then was slammed into a wall.

The building is probably also on fire. 

Steve blinks and pulls his hand away from One’s tattoo, suddenly cold.

"It suited his purposes to have you all think of me as a Tech. He wanted us separate for now. He talked to me, just like he talked to you," One continues. He brushes his thin hair out of his eyes distractedly but his gaze never loses its intensity.

"You know the speeches. You heard them, too." He echoes Brenner's familiar words in a deliberately flat tone. "We are pioneers. The experiments undertaken here will revolutionize the world. There will be a new hierarchy, a new order. Pain is part of it. You cannot grow stronger without pain. You cannot grow without sacrifice. Sentiment is weakness. In time there will be the man-gods, the Übermensch. They are us, we are supermen. We will be at the top of the world order."

One's mouth quirks up in a wry smirk. "Of course, we, the real supermen, are still beneath him. You understand? You and I, the Numbers... we are gods and monsters. But we are still beneath Papa, under his control. Always. That was the message, wasn't it? The recurring theme in all his stories."

That's true, Steve supposes. Not really the big issue right now, but...

It is a lot to process. Their origin story, the genesis of all Numbers. Their reason for being, according to their creator-god.

But in the end does it really make any difference? The results are the same. The final message, the gospel truth, and he now sees it embodied in the man in front of him. The past and the future, all laid out.

They make you so they can use you.

They make you and because of this you can't escape them.

Steve sees echoes of Six in this. They make you, and then you become them. After all, weren't they doing the same thing to Six, training Six to be a Tech? Taking him on missions and making him obey and teaching him how to leave and come back again afterwards.

They made Six powerful, and they stomped out all the gentle and kind bits and tried their best to make him cruel and selfish. Would they have given Six a suit eventually? Would he have carried that wallet with the fake ID around forever, putting it in his pocket and then taking it out again and handing it to Brenner when it was time to stop playing pretend?

Would he have been another 'William', a Williams, a Billy... and is that even a name? Or is it a call sign? A shadowy imprint of the person kneeling before him now, this forgotten elder, a rare original?

And all for what?

"Why?" Steve asks, so quietly the word is almost silent. He looks up at One. "Why?"

_All for what?_

"I don't know," One admits. He doesn't pretend like he doesn't know exactly what Steve is asking. "I never knew why. Gottlieb... he started it, but he was... insane, in a way. He did it because he could. To prove that he could do the impossible. I'm not sure if there's anything more to it than that, if there was ever anything more. Even with Brenner... I don't know if there was ever a real goal, an end to all this. He talked about defeating our enemies and advancing mankind and saving the country but... that doesn't really make sense does it?"

Steve shakes his head 'no' and the two Numbers feel a thrill of kinship between them again because it's true, it doesn't make any sense and it never has, and they can say that out loud now because they are both Numbers and they see and they know.

What is nationhood and patriotism and eugenics and power to creatures like them?

Their world is a completely different thing, and they both know the secret - that Papa's stories and his reasons and his endgame never made any sense.

"Just did it because he could, maybe," One smiles sadly. "I don't know."

And it is unfair, perhaps, but Steve feels suddenly, horribly let down. Crushed, in a way, by the knowledge that there is no bigger purpose, no better reason for all this suffering. If the oldest living Number doesn't know the secret meaning behind all this, then maybe there isn't any secret meaning at all.

It's just them, and now they’re here, Steve – Seven – and One.

The Dreamer and the First. Brought together by fate, or an accident, or a cosmic joke.

The lights above them flicker ominously, a reminder that they are not alone in the building, that danger is here and that these existential questions must give way to more practical concerns. Steve's mind flashes to the monsters, to the Techs... to the other Numbers. The Numbers who must still be here, trapped in the building.

He thinks of Billy, bloodied and battered and fighting off the monsters all alone.

El and Hopper must be on their way by now.

Hopper... with his uniform. Good and bad. America.

_"All that evil, and I didn't stop it. Couldn't think past protecting the only thing I had. I didn't care about the others. I didn't care about you until I saw you in the woods. I left you in that place for years. You suffered for years. Others have suffered. Because I'm a coward."_

_He's coming to get me out. He promised he'd come and get me out._

_We'll get them out. We have to get them out._

_I have to get out._

_Oh no..._

“What’s wrong?” One narrows his eyes, studying Steve with a gaze that makes him feel like he is being dissected and evaluated.

“What do you want?” Steve asks quietly. "What do you want from me?"

The question makes him sad inside - it changes the whole tenor of the conversation. However, it is also the only question that matters now.

_What do you want? Why did you bring me here? Are you a Tech or a Number?_

_Who are you?_

One reaches out and gently places his hand on Steve’s.

“You don’t need to be afraid, Seven," he says softly. "Not of me. I’m not going to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.”

_But you did hurt me_, Steve thinks. 

_You did hurt me._

He doesn't say it out loud.

He shakes thought away… changes the subject. Retreat, redirect. An old strategy learned from years with Papa.

“You’re like me?” he asks, forcing himself to keep his voice steady. “What can you do?”

“Nothing,” One says, mildly, the shadow of a grin returning to his face.

Steve blinks. “Nothing?”

“I have no powers of my own. Except one, I suppose, but it’s sort of the opposite of a power. Can you guess what it is?”

Steve frowns and tries to think. Everyone thought he didn’t have powers for the longest time, but in the end he did. He has his dreams, and his ability to read people, and even that silly pulse of force that comes and goes at the oddest times.

That's a power, not an 'opposite'... so, not like that, then.

One looks at him expectantly, and Steve blinks and considers what happened in the big lab space a few minutes ago - the strange incident with Billy and the fire that refused to obey him when he flung it at the perceived threat, at Williams the Tech who was coming for him and Steve.

That has never happened before in Steve's experience. Billy never loses control of the fire like that... not since he was little and still learning. Moreover, this burst of flame didn't just fizzle out or burn over-bright, didn't explode or go sideways.

This fireball was thrown directly at Williams, at One. A perfect shot.

Steve could see it, feel it - knew it was on target. He could see it all play out as clear as one of his dreams, knew the progression of events, knew the ending. He'd watched Billy do it a million times before. 

And then the fire stopped. Moved. Turned back... back onto Billy. Attacking him, hurting him, going completely the wrong way.

Like it wasn’t under Billy's control.

Like it didn’t belong to him anymore.

Well, if Brenner taught him anything it was that you should always test your theories.

Steve looks at Williams, really looks at him, into his eyes, and tries to see his thoughts, his feelings, his truth. He looks in a way he never has with Williams before, in a way he rarely indulged in with any of the Techs - past the surface, past the top layer. He tries to find the colorful threads that lead him into the depths of a person's soul.

Nothing.

He sees nothing.

A placid surface, and emptiness underneath.

It’s all a blank slate.

“How…?” Steve sucks in a breath and presses back against the wall, shocked and utterly off-kilter.

“My mother noticed it first,” One says, voice as mild and calm as ever. “She saw something in me - she said it was a kind of absence. Gottlieb... Papa... he made me in his basement, in a makeshift lab, and from the moment I was born something was missing. My mother said it was my soul, but I don’t know. I don’t know if souls exist, but I suppose I wouldn't know either way if I do or don't have one. I do know that I don't... feel things, the way others do. Humans are able to form... connections. With each other..."

"Threads," Steve murmurs.

"Threads... but I lacked that ability. To connect, to understand others, to reach them emotionally. To feel strongly, or to contextualize what I was feeling. Something missing, or perhaps just replaced with something else. And when the government agents and doctors came, that was the start of everything. A whole new life.”

One’s flinty gaze never falters, fixed on Steve as the boy listens to his story, but his eyes do seem to grow a little distant as he remembers.

“My father’s research was the basis for Brenner’s official project. Their goals was to create beings with new and powerful abilities using a chemical intervention in utero. The initial result - me - was unimpressive at first, but over time Papa realized there were some notable peculiarities in my DNA. The theory had potential, and people saw that. Built a whole research program around it. The flaws were soon fixed and in the… the missing piece in me, they were able to isolate the genetic coding for new powers, new skills. New Numbers were made, and I was the source. I'm the first, and the Mother of everyone. I have no powers of my own, but I'm far from powerless.”

“Protons and electrons,” Steve interrupts, brightening slightly. He remembers this from Dustin. “Positively charged and negatively charged. You cancel us out. Your power is that we can't use our powers on you.”

One huffs in amusement. “Yes. But more than that. I can share powers with someone else. Six couldn’t burn me and you can’t read my mind… but I can also manipulate Six's fire if I want to, if I’m close enough. That’s why I was often assigned to watch him on missions, so I could stop him if he got out of control. If I’m close to you, I can listen in when you are reading someone else’s thoughts and feelings, and I can feel your emotions almost as though you are projecting them to me.”

“Like a radio?”

“Sure, like a radio. Like finding the right frequency on a radio, tuning it so you can listen in. Once I connect with another Number we can share the frequency. I can even disrupt the frequency in others, like I did with Six. I took his fire and turned it on him, threw it back at him. Theoretically I could go further, hijack someone's powers and control the powers and the person completely but that's... difficult. My success with that was very limited when Brenner tested me.”

Steve’s pleasure at understanding is curbed considerably as the implications of One’s words slowly dawns on him. He was leaning in before, drawn inexplicably to this fascinating concept, but now he pulls back.

Discomfort slips into a feeling of quiet devastation.

“You knew, then…” he says, slowly. “You knew what I could do. My powers... you must have known every time you were close and could feel me reading minds and having dreams. I can't remember a time before you - so you must have known. And you didn’t tell Papa.”

The rebuke in Steve's voice is unmistakable, even though Steve is not entirely sure what exactly he's upset about.

Ultimately it was for the best that Papa didn't find out about his powers until much, much later, but still... One - Williams - had been a Tech then. An enemy combatant during some of the worst moments in Seven's life. He has always been the enemy. He'd been someone who stood by and watched while Seven was torn down and punished and told he was worthless.

He had known the truth and had said and done nothing. He hadn't told Brenner. He hadn't made the punishments stop.

He hadn't even revealed himself to Seven. He is only telling Steve now when everything is already shattered and broken beyond fixing. He had flung the table across the room in frustration when they first came in to this room and now Steve can guess why - because things have gone wrong.

Because Williams the Tech hadn't wanted it to go this way. Because he's an enemy, still. 

A liar.

It's confusing, very confusing, and Steve can't articulate why it hurts so much. He doesn't need to, apparently.

One pauses, looking almost - almost - ashamed. He shakes his head.

“He asked me what your powers were," he admits. "I didn’t tell him, even though I could feel your thoughts whenever you were near. Feel your hurt when he punished you."

He knew. He lied.

Enemy. Enemy. 

"It was better that way for many reasons but also... I didn’t want to share you.”

This draws Steve out of his musing, draws him up short. It is not the explanation or excuse Steve expected.

In fact, he doesn't understand it at all. 

_Wait._

"Share me," Steve echoes hollowly.

One hums in affirmation. He is kneeling in front of Steve, so close to where the boy first pressed himself up against the wall in fear. His shoulders dip slightly and he seems, suddenly, much less like an adult explaining things to a child.

Now he looks a little like a servant before a master, or an acolyte before an altar. Or at least he would do if he wasn't so mysterious himself - a swirl of gray that Steve can't define in his head, tap-dancing at the edges like a ghost. 

“You know, I used to go into your room after lights out,” the older man says.

Steve blinks.

The air is sucked from his lungs and the room seems to go utterly still. One places his palms on his knees and fixes Steve with a cool, piercing gaze that strips everything away until nothing of the boy is left hidden.

“An absence in me," he says. "That's what my mother called it. A _lack._"

Something stirs in Steve, a hindbrain signal warning him that he is standing dangerously close to an abyss.

"I've never had dreams of my own," One cocks his head slight, gaze boring into him. "From birth, never... no dreams. All human beings dream - it's a scientific fact, a basic requirement for the species - but not me. Not me. No colors and feelings in my sleep. Never even knew what dreams were before you.”

One shakes his head with something like wry wonder, and a small smile twitches the corners of his mouth up but it doesn't find any permanent footing.

“Can you imagine that?" he asks. "Not being able to dream anything? The absence of a - well, let's call it a soul, for lack of a better word - in my waking hours broke my mind in my sleep... and vice versa, perhaps. If dreams are our way of processing the world, then the lack of dreams killed any chance I had at developing normal emotional empathy.

"I never knew what anyone was thinking, couldn't even imagine it. Gottlieb would hold me as a child and I'd feel... nothing. He touched me but I couldn't feel him. My mother, she tried to smother me one night, I nearly died, and I felt nothing but instinct, a feral animal's need to fight back. Why she did it... I couldn't fathom. Wasn't wounded emotionally at all. And when I killed her, pushed her down the stairs, I felt nothing then, either, except a kind of personal satisfaction that had nothing to do with..."

One pauses, trailing off and staring into space, and Steve stares and wonders if the man even realizes what he just said. Either way, he doesn't elaborate further.

"For as long as I can remember," the Number continues after a moment, "I would sleep for maybe two hours a night and then I'd wake up, and then the day would be just as gray and empty as the night. With no feelings to connect you to the world, every day is the same. Most of the time people are just walking shadows to me. Blank and cold. Stone walls. I couldn't... couldn't see anyone's motives, anyone's feelings, and I didn't care to. I just observed what they did in relation to me and built a strategy for living out of that.

"You don't know what this is, but Brenner described it once as a black hole. I am a black hole, an endless night that absorbs everything and crushes it out of existence without... changing or feeling or touching it at all." One's face darkens further. "It’s enough to make a person… mad, I guess. Insane. I'm a black hole, and I didn't even understand what I was missing. Not until you."

Steven can't imagine it. The dreams have always been a part of him, and he has always known a parallel world beyond the waking one. He has always been borderline overwhelmed by people and their emotions, a tangle of colors that he is always on the verge of drowning in.

He stares at One and can't imagine it, and he is trying so hard to do so that he almost misses the man's final, gentle declaration.

One stares, and Steve's breath catches, and the last three words echo in his brain.

_Not until you._

"You’re special, Seven," One says, voice heavy with profound tenderness. "You possess the one thing I never had and always wanted more than anything else - more than power, more than freedom, more than revenge. Your dreams, your mind, your soul - this is your power. When I touched you and when I was close to you I could finally see and feel. There was nothing, and then there was you.

"I was dead, I was dead, and then one day I came to escort you from the Nursery, you were only four, and... I nearly died then. I had to leave. I got a nosebleed and locked myself in a bathroom stall and wept until I was sick. I had never cried in my life - not as a child, not even as an infant. I came out of my mother and Gottlieb's lab soulless and blank. But I cried that day, because I felt... I felt for the first time. You were disappointed because there was no applesauce with dinner, and happy about the game you played with Eight. I felt that. I saw colors. And finally the world around me... it started to take shape. Make sense. You broke me that day, and remade me, and you didn't even realize.

“Of course," he says, shaking his head a little, his hands trembling slightly with the sheer force of the memory, "Just the once wasn't enough. And I had to be careful. Nighttime was always going to be the most convenient - lax security for the longest amount of time. But I couldn't have predicted how it would be. Your sleeping dreams are a thousand times more intense than when you're awake.

"The first time I stepped close and saw your dreams I nearly destroyed everything again. Nearly screamed and cried and woke you up. Upset... awestruck. You were dreaming of trees, and a girl, and a crack in a wall. Like now, I think. You dreamed this. I remember you dreaming this. You dreamed of everything except me because..."

"I can't see you," Steve exhales in shock. "Protons and electrons."

"You're like a drug, an addiction. I'd drink in moments with you, hold onto those waves of light and color to sustain myself for the rest... for the gray gaps, the endless nights. It was harder than you might think to get close enough to you, to sneak in to watch you sleep. To stand by you when you were most receptive, most in-tune with that other world you live in. Dreaming all sorts of wonders in glorious colorful shapes. Feeling so much fear and love and sorrow and joy. 

"It was difficult, but I still managed to do it, sometimes… and those times… oh,” One sighs heavily, “Seven…”

“Steve,” Steve corrects automatically through the fog descending over his mind, a kind of hysterical blindness. “I’m Steve.”

“It was like seeing the sky for the first time," One says, ignoring him. "It was raining the last time you escaped… do you remember what it felt like to feel rain for the first time? To feel the sun after a lifetime of darkness and artificial light? You can’t know. You’ve always had the dreams, the feelings. You had more than you knew what to do with, I think... and they'd spill out like ink and cover everyone around you. I could feel you drowning in it, sometimes. I could feel you resist it. A burden, a terrible burden. But to me, it was sublime. Even the horrors were beautiful to me.”

The man blinks, dazed, lost in his own memories. He looks down at Steve and Steve looks back, shocked by the mirrored image he sees.

“Even your horrors are beautiful to me,” One says.

Steve swallows, chilled to the bone, and shakes his head.

“I don't really feel emotions the same way normal people do. But... I really _hate _Six. You know that?” the older Number continues, almost conversationally, as if Steve isn't going to pieces right in front of him.

Steve manages to let out a soft, confused noise and One's face twitches into a thin mask of repressed fury, the force of a sudden, underlying wave of rage in the man sending a sickening feeling through Steve's chest.

“He had you," he says, voice edging into a knife-like sharpness. "He had you in his bed, in his arms… every night. Those nights that for me were just endless stretches of darkness, trapped in isolation, were times of pleasure for _him_. Brenner just _gave_ you to him. This priceless thing, and he just handed you over to a lumbering monster who could never appreciate you. I had to sneak into your room like a thief after he finished _fucking_ you if I wanted to get close enough to look into your mind and share your dreams, while he got to sleep next to you in peace without the faintest idea what a gift he’d been given."

One is shaking now, trembling with barely buried anger, and Steve is shaking too for a different reason. He may not be able to break into One's head, but he can feel the older Number's emotions clearly anyway - they are different, Steve can sense that they are different from what others feel, coming as they do from a fractured, unstable place and morphing into something twisted and extreme and _wrong_. They send shattering bolts of nausea through him via his own empathetic gift.

"I had to steal scraps of color and light and feelings and it was never, ever enough," One seethes, "and he got to have you, touch you and consume you and take you for granted. He didn't even know. He didn't even believe that you had power! And then… then I’d have to see you in the daytime with bruises on your neck from him. I had to listen to Brenner tell you that the dreams were lies… and I can't feel, but I learned to hate, then. Even when I wasn't near you, even when I couldn't use your gift to feel, I knew how to hate, and I felt myself start to shatter... shatter...”

"I can feel you now," Steve gasps. "I can see your mind..."

"Yes. I know how to hate. I _learned_ that."

The image of a shadow standing over him, of a blurred figure dogging his footsteps, following two steps behind him his whole life… and Seven, Seven who could always see past every wall and mask... he hadn't known, he hadn't seen, he's been so blind because the man before him was just _invisible_, except that he...

"You can't really blame me for looking the other way on Six's missions sometimes," One says, the faux-calm overtones barely covering the viciousness underneath. "McCormick and Scott were unpleasant, it's true, but frankly Six's suffering is nothing compared to what I suffered. A little physical discomfort now and then, a tiny violation... it was a small price for him to pay for having constant access to you. I didn't hurt him myself. I didn't hurt anyone."

“You hurt him,” Steve chokes out, voice a little stronger, fueled by a bubbling anger that belongs to him now, not One. “You hurt him a lot! And you hurt me! You wheeled me in to get electroshock punishments. You helped them put me in the Bathtub. You were going to hold me down and _fuck_ me…!”

One lurches forward and Steve doesn’t even get a chance to feel afraid before the older man’s hand is frantically covering his mouth, stopping the words.

“I didn’t want to,” One insists, voice cracking, his free hand fluttering over Steve’s face, twisting in his hair. Just like that the rage is gone, replaced by something whimpering and needy. “I mean, I did... I do... I _want_ you, Seven, I want to be close to you, intimate... but not like it was that day. Not with you crying and afraid. That was Brenner... it was all _him_. I had to do it, you understand? It was the only way I could keep you. They... they take away anything that means something to you. In this terrible world they take away everything you love... so I couldn't show anyone, I couldn't let Brenner see. I had to keep you, and that meant I had to hurt you."

One ducks his head submissively, eyes still on Steve, looking a little like an animal begging for forgiveness. His mood swings are giving the boy whiplash, but Steve realizes, fighting through the haze of his own panic, that this yo-yo effect might be a side effect of their shared powers. There is a clear lack of control in One, who has never had to learn to self-moderate emotionally, and his proximity to Steve might be undermining the older man's judgement.

This instability is not enough to shake One's resolve, however. He keeps his hand over Steve's mouth, and he still looms large like an impossible obstacle standing between the boy and the possibility of escape.

"It killed me, too. It hurt me to see you hurt. Your dreams were so dark after those punishments," One shakes his head. "What you felt... I felt it, too. Please believe me... it hurt me so much. The pain and fear... it was beautiful, awful, amazing... terrible. I really did... do... I wanted you to be happy, I did, because then I could share it, don't you see? I tried to give you things, tried to make it easier... but I couldn't risk showing favoritism. Not where Brenner could see. He'd have exploited that, used it against both of us. Whored you out. _Again_."

Steve struggles, eyes blurring slightly with tears.

"And I’ll make it right. I will. I’ll fix it, take away all the bad things. Make you forget the past, all the horrors. And you, you can love me, and teach me how to feel. We can be together now… and I’ll protect you and we can share your dreams, always. You don’t know how awful it was before I found you, and when you left... nothing but coldness and darkness and... and no sleep. None at all. For days and days when you ran I couldn't sleep, and...I knew I needed to get you back. I'll go mad without you, Seven, please, _please_, I'll go mad, I'll die, and...”

One’s hand slips from Steve’s mouth but Steve doesn’t feel safe speaking up. He feels like he's stuck in a loop, his own feelings fueling the other Number, and the responding emotional feedback from One overwhelming him, heightening the tension and panic. The older Number continues anyway, almost frantic.

“You weren’t really happy with those others, were you? With the children from before, and with that Sheriff? You won't see them again... they won't be a problem. We’ll go away, go somewhere else… somewhere with trees. Or a beach. Would you like to see the ocean?”

"I...", Steve starts, stuttering, forcing the words out in a desperate attempt to regain control over himself and One. "I... I am... I _am_ sorry. About the... the dreams and... I'm sorry you were hurt..."

And it's the truth. Steve feels terribly sorry for this man even though fear is rising like a tide within him and threatening to overwhelm everything else. One is clearly in pain, and as he stares at Steve with almost feverish eyes and tremors in his body, looking at the boy like a starving man looks at a banquet, he is a truly pitiable sight. However...

“The... the others…”

“Just us,” One corrects him, a little more firmly. Steve forces strength into his legs, pushes himself up to his feet, sliding up the wall. One follows, never allowing Steve more than about a foot and a half of space between them.

“The other Numbers,” Steve clarifies, insistent, trying to move and willing to accept even centimetres of distance from the other man. “They’re still in the building. And the gate… the gate I opened…”

“It doesn’t matter. _They_ don’t matter. All that matters is…”

“Billy,” Steve interrupts. “Six. I need to find him.”

“No!” 

“I can’t just leave them!” Steve cries. “I can close the gate; I know I can!”

“Or you can leave it open,” One grins, manic.The glint in his eyes is a kind of insane greediness, and Steve remembers vividly being pushed down by punishing hands that took and took and took. “Most of the other Numbers have been evacuated already, moved to other Labs. Those… monsters will take care of the rest. Leave this place to burn, Seven…”

“It’s Steve!”

“We can run. No one will even notice in the confusion. You can finally live without being chased down and hunted.”

“Six will find me. Billy…”

“He won’t. He’s dead!”

“He’ll still find me! He’ll always find me!”

One huffs dismissively and Steve feels like he’s been punched in the gut. For all that One is special, knowledgeable, a kindred spirit, someone like him, he’s also just the same as the rest, as Brenner, as the Techs. Even Six.

They never trust him, never think he’s capable of thinking for himself. Delicate, stupid, powerless Seven who needs to be protected even when he knows with every fiber of his being that everything about this is _wrong_.

_What about what you want, kid?_ That sounds like Hopper.

Hopper may not be perfect, but he represents a way out, an alternative... if he is even here. If he is here and still alive.

If he isn't... if he isn't...

Well then. Steve will find his own way out.

Decision made, the young Number squares his shoulders and moves deliberately towards the door.

“I’m going now," he says. "I’m going to find the others and close the gate.”

"No, Seven," One replies in a tone as condescending as Brenner on his worst day. He moves between Steve and the exit. "No, you're not."

"It's Steve, and you're not listening to me!" Steve's voice is rising in volume, and he shifts again and is blocked again. "We can't just leave without the others... and I can do this. I can help stop it, I can make up for everything. I can do this, and I'm going to do it."

"No," One insists, and his hands wrap themselves around Steve's arms, every inch of him radiating a Tech's unmistakable insistence and authority. "No, you're not. We're leaving, just you and me. We're going to go away some place where no one will ever finds us. We'll find peace there... happiness. In time you'll see how good it can be, how good I can be for you, and you'll be so happy."

"No!" Steve shouts, wrenching his arms out One's grip and pulling back, managing to free himself from the older man's grasp even though One is still standing between him and the door. "No! I'm not going with you!"

For a moment, just a moment, Steve thinks maybe he's won... that the older man is going to let him go, maybe even help him.

One sighs, takes a step back, his arms hanging loose at his sides. There is a brief, delicate pause as both men inhale and exhale, watching each other. One glances down to the floor, and then shakes his head.

"Oh, my beautiful boy," he murmurs sadly, and then a gun is in his hand, and Steve's eyes widen. "Yes, you are."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I have no defense for the delay with this chapter except *gestures vaguely at everything*, and looking back I think I might have stolen something from an X-Men movie for this but tbh who even knows at this point? Writing is hard, and writing with pandemic brain is harder, but I'm optimistic that I can get back in the swing of things soon.
> 
> Anyway, you guys are troopers for hanging in there through my writers block and life-spiral - I hope you enjoy it, and either way please drop me a line and say hi!
> 
> Stay safe and healthy, lovebugs! You are all stardust, so be wonderful to yourselves!  
<3 <3 <3


	10. I'm gonna run to you

** Then **

_The book is called "Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus"_ _and it was written a long time ago (for the given value of time... time which means nothing in this place) by a woman named Mary Shelley. _

_When the book is not in use it is kept in his room on a small shelf, lined up in a neat row next to other carefully preserved texts. On the shelf is_ _ "Robinson Crusoe", "Moby Dick", "Call of the Wild". One or two others on rotation. _

_Adventure books are the best options for someone like him._

_The emotions experienced in adventure tales can be contextualized even if the person reading them is... unusual. They can be turned into tales of missions. Tactical guides. Studies of the basic, animal hierarchies of need. _

_Ishmael's existential horror while trapped at sea and clinging to Queenpeg's floating coffin notwithstanding, the finer points of humanity are very often depicted as (or some might say reduced to) an instinctual drive for survival._

_There is plenty of subliminal context to get out of all these books, however. Things even Papa doesn't wholly intend. _

_For example, One understands perfectly well Captain Ahab's self-destructive obsessiveness. He sees it in every facet of his own life. _

_He, too, is under the control of a "grand, ungodly, god-like man". He, too, feels his own compulsions flowering inside of him, a tangle of need he silently nurtures in the long nighttime stretches of sleeplessness._

_Despite this dangerous, crooked kind of burgeoning emotional intelligence, One has managed to keep the dark shadows in his heart hidden well enough to earn himself a copy of "Frankenstein" for his collection. Papa was initially unsure about giving it to him, and in this case One understands why. _

_As he started reading he easily appreciated the basic parallels with his own situation. It is a book about science and creation, and Papa is always talking about that. _

_When the monster first appeared on the pages One wasn't scared, exactly - fear is the mind killer and surrendering to the dread of things not immediate, not present, is a fool's game, an impossible notion - but as he lay awake at night staring at the glowing light above his door, the only beacon in the darkness, he wondered about the existence of something so awful, so repugnant, that even its own creator couldn't stand to look at it. _

_And although he can't quite feel anything stronger about it than a grim sort of distant thoughtfulness, he does consider that his mother (not a true mother... like the Creature he is motherless... she was just 'a' mother...) might have felt some similar kind of repulsion that memorable night when she pressed the pillow over his face and tried to end it all for him._

_In the end he is allowed to read "Frankenstein" for the same reason he is allowed to read any book, for the same reason he is the only Number in the Lab permitted such a dangerous thing. _

_It is because Brenner is not afraid of what might happen. Brenner is confident that no rebellion could possibly exist in the breast of a being who can not feel, who never could feel. A person for whom the words on a page are just that - words._

_What good are books for such a person, then, except as a way to pass the time? There is no danger here. _

_At best, it would serve as an interesting parallel experiment to determine knowledge retention and incorporation, as well as rational processing, in the strange singularity that is this young almost-human._

_ Perfectly safe for the test subject._

_No emotion, no empathy, no vibrant poetry or beautiful prose could possibly stir feelings of love and rage and resistance in something as... lacking ...as One._

_There are limits even to what a book can do._

_"What I ask of you," One reads aloud, sitting comfortably on his lonely, narrow bed, "is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless..."_

_The door opens and One looks up from his book. It is Papa standing in the doorway, and instead of greeting the Number the older man merely nods to himself._

_"Good, you're already dressed," he says. "Come."_

_Unfailingly obedient because there is nothing else to be - obedience is simple, and simply the best means of survival - One puts his book aside, stands, and follows Papa out the door of his room and down the hall._

_Unfailingly obedient, except..._

_Except everything has changed now. In the space of a few months, everything has turned upside-down._

_Has it? _

_Papa hadn't asked him directly. _

_One hadn't lied._

_But he also hadn't told the whole truth, either._

_One has a secret now, and that, he knows, is a forbidden thing. He can have books but he cannot have secrets, and it doesn't really matter if Papa never asked him directly... the Number recognizes that this is a loophole, a nuance that the older man would not appreciate. _

_One never told Papa the truth about the boy, so it's a secret now. One has a secret now._

_"If you fail to get a read on him, we will mostly likely suspend everything but routine testing. If it's something latent perhaps we can tease it out but I'm reluctant to waste resources on him when others have shown such promise."_

_"What will you do with him?" One asks. _

_He's not curious. _

_He's not. Really, he's not._

_He's incapable of that... or at least he was. _

_Curiosity_ _ implies investment, and One is not invested... _

_No, that's not true. He is invested... _

_He's invested and he resents it..._

_It doesn't really matter. When he's alone, when he's not in the room with the boy, it's not so bad. He tells himself it is not so bad. He can survive without satisfying this strange new addiction. He can, and he will. It's not so bad._

_He's strong. He's not Papa's favorite, but he is One. He is the first. He doesn't need this... this new experience._

_He is One, and the one most like Them, the Techs, Papa. The Creation obedient to and aligned with the Creator-god. A mirror reflection of the closest thing they have to divinity. Not like Shelley's creature, bent on destruction and chaos._

_ (He doesn't desire destruction, not on the surface, not where anyone can see. But deep down, deep down...?)_

_(He's not loyal to Brenner. He is not loyal to anyone. You can't be One and be loyal. It is simply that Brenner means survival, and obeying and satisfying Brenner means survival. It's the best way for One to get what he wants.)_

_(For now.)_

_He is One. Strong and solitary. That means something. He did not survive this long by being curious, by being invested..._

_"Under normal circumstances we would dispose of him in the standard way. Perhaps postmortem tests could pick up something. There was some promising data found with the others..."_

_Ah. It is as One feared, then._

_(No, not feared, not fear, he doesn't feel fear, he doesn't feel anything, nothing at all except when he's standing next to... when he's thinking about...)_

_He will have to make a choice. Make THE choice, really. He has never made an unselfish choice - he is incapable of doing otherwise, incapable of thinking beyond the requirements of survival. Now, however, he contemplates it. _

_Tell the truth, save a life. Save THE life - the life that is upending everything in One's carefully ordered universe._

_"However..." Brenner muses._

_Oh, this might be interesting._

_"...Experiment Six has grown disturbingly attached to him, and he has proven rather adept at soothing the more volatile Numbers in the Nursery. He may serve a different purpose in the long term. No reason to rush into anything, particularly if there doesn't seem to be anything of value worth immediate study."_

_One doesn't say or do anything to acknowledge this. He doesn't have to, anyway, because they've arrived at their destination._

_"Remember the rules, One," Papa says. One doesn't acknowledge this order either because it's pointless. _

_Obviously he remembers the rules. He never forgets things. He never gets confused about when it's time to be One and when it's time to be Williams. He doesn't forget when it's time to be a Number and when he's supposed to play the Tech._

_It's his curse, his... his Promethean punishment._

_They walk into the Testing Room. _

_Seven is there, wide-eyed, a picture of childish fragility. And yet there is a stubborn set to his jaw that is a new thing, an increasingly persistent thing. A troubling thing, in Brenner's eyes. The flickering promise of a boy slowly and inexorably becoming the person he is, and was always going to be._

_One is suddenly awash with feeling. _

_Seven's feelings._

_He's nearly knocked to the ground with fear. _

_It's fear, oh God - **there is a man... no, a monster, a dead thing standing over him while he sleeps and it is going to break his neck **(just like it did the little Frankenstein boy - but that's not Seven, Seven doesn't know that book, that is One's unrealized fear and he's feeling it now for the first time because Seven is here and Seven's terror is overwhelming him and blurring the boundaries of who One is... all those clearly defined lines are going gray and he's got to pull away now, now, NOW and, oh...)**, it'll do all sorts of horrible things to him and he's afraid, he's afraid of the men in the room, the men standing there, not men but monsters - or is he the monster? - and they are the men come to kill him and unmake him and make him into a lonely dead thing -**_

_Seven is hiding it, but he feels it, and because Seven feels it One feels it too. It is wonderful and it is terrible and he must keep it a secret because how could he ever, ever give this up?_

_It's not loyalty, it's need, and there is another outside of One now who is important, so important, and he can never let him go..._

_He's invested, he's a junkie, he's a slave, he has been given a creature like him, and they shall be monsters together, cut off from the world, and their lives will not be happy, but..._

_But..._

_It's only because of practice, a strict regimen of self-discipline, that One doesn't break down and scream. _

_He pulls back, he pulls back and he doesn't scream but it's a close thing..._

_Instead, when Brenner looks at him, he sucks in a deep breath and merely shakes his head slightly, his face a stone mask (the mask of a monster)._

_Brenner's mouth turns down in annoyance but he continues with the farce anyway._

_"Seven, this is Agent Williams. We're going to run a few tests..."_

_And they do. _

_The tests are extensive. Some are invasive and painful. Some are completely unnecessary._

_One endures. Through it all, he endures._

_His choice has been made. _

**Now**

"Take it, take it!" Jones screeches at Franklin, thrusting a box full of files into the other man's hands.

"What the fuck am I supposed to...?" Franklin's confused yelp is drowned out by the raised voices of a large number of frantic, scurrying Techs.

"Get a hold of yourself, Agent!"

"Burn them, goddammit!"

"I can't get anyone on coms..."

"Where...?"

"Twelve and Thirteen are already being taken to rendezvous point C. Someone go down the to Freak Show and collect the remaining specimens..."

"Has anyone seen...?"

"I've lost..."

Franklin doesn't have time to open his mouth again - to ask whether he is supposed to burn the files or save them, to ask how he's supposed to do as he's told, to ask why.

He doesn't have time to ask about the Numbers or the specimens in the room full of big glass jars or whether this might be a good time to think about retiring from the hard and fast life of a government agent and settle down to something more his speed.

His time is up.

A massive, hulking monster with a face full of teeth burst through the door behind him.

It goes through the door, through the pulsing, dancing, multi-colored gateway that sings to the blood of Its kind, beckons Them onward with a familiar, seductive song.

It goes through the door, following Its brethren, the corded muscles of its hind-legs pumping fast, Its gaping maw opening up to reveal rows and rows of teeth, ready to attack and eat.

On the other side of the door there is Prey.

This new world is not like Its world. It understands that on some base level. The air is different. The Prey is different. 

The situation It finds Itself in is not unappealing, however.

The Prey is soft. Slow and panicky. Easily taken. There are defense mechanisms that make loud noises and sting Its tough flesh, but compared to some of the flora and fauna that exists on the other side of the doorway these hardly seem like a major threat.

Undeterred, It gluts itself on fresh meat, yelps and calls to other members of the Pack.

Come. Eat.

The Prey here is tasty.

There are noises. There are lights. The light is different here. It makes it hard to see - too bright.

There are some Prey that are not like the others, Prey that fights back and fights well. A different kind of animal, perhaps - something in them seems familiar to It, in the same way that the song of the doorway is familiar.

Kindred, but not quite. Not of this world, but not of Its world, either.

No matter.

It hunts. Its surroundings are burning. Dangerous. Loud noises and stings. Legs, face, body hurts. Pain categorized as either insignificant or catastrophic.

But the pain doesn't stop the feast.

It runs down hallways. It is a creature built for running, even in strange places like this. It is an apex predator. Its purpose is to kill and feed. 

It runs, and as It runs It sees figures running through a clear entrance, an exit into another place. It gets a whiff of a different scent, a different kind of air. Beyond the translucent barrier, It sees another world. A whole new world.

A world full of Prey.

It runs.

Fourteen is running fast, fast, _fast_. Though small, she has always had a particular affinity for speed, and now there are monsters and she is going to have to go faster than she ever has before. 

The big, lumbering boy, Ten, is right behind her, and Fifteen is right behind him, and bringing up the rear is Five. They had managed to slip away in the chaos when one of the monsters ate mean old Agent Baker who was supposed to be taking them somewhere more secure, and now they are running, running, running, and hiding from Techs and monsters as they go. 

"Fourteen, slow down!" Five hisses, afraid to yell loudly in case someone hears them and takes them away. Fourteen does slow down - she really is too fast for the others to ever hope to keep up - but she refuses to slow down by much. She's too scared to completely stop her desperate attempt to put some distance between herself and the havoc behind them.

"It's there," Ten perks up, pointing towards a square metal grate set in an innocuous wall. "We can get out that way! Hurry!"

With their combined strength it takes only moments to rip the grate away, loose screws flying from their holes and landing with little pings on the ground.

The exposed air duct opens into darkness, an unknown place, and without hesitating Fourteen dives into their newly-made escape hatch. A dreadful roar echoes down the corridor and the other Numbers quickly follow her.

"Are you sure?" Fifteen, the littlest and gentlest of their ragtag band, asks as they crawl in after Ten. 

"Yes. It leads out. I know..."

There is a suddenly growling noise behind them, followed by a shriek and then a sickening thunk sound. Five wails as a dog-like monster latches onto his leg and drags him backwards, back through the duct's opening.

"Five!" Ten screams, lurching back over Fifteen to catch the eldest's hand. Fourteen feels a corresponding horror. It's there, a monster, and it's got Five, strong and brave Five, and Five is the closest thing to an adult they have, Five is their protector, their friend...

"Go!" Five yells through teeth gritted hard against the pain. The dog thing yowls and bites down again and Five chokes but manages to hold on to consciousness, to glare at the little Numbers and give them one final, lifesaving command.

"Go! Now! Run!"

With one last show of strength Five yanks his wrist out of Ten's tenuous grasp and is pulled backwards through the grate and towards whatever fate awaits beyond. Any final words he might shout are lost in the cacophony of yells and alarms and the pounding rush of their collective heartbeats. 

The Numbers left behind have no choice but to keep crawling towards freedom.

In fairness, neither one of them could have predicted what would happen. For all that Steve may be a mind reader, a precognitive, a dreamer, time and reality don't really work like that. 

Reactions and responses don't tumble over each other like dominoes, one by one in an orderly line - instead, they spill and mix like paint. A tangled web of cause and effect, until it is all an indistinguishable sea of motion.

They are both moving before they know what they are doing, and when they move, they fall.

When Steve sees the gun, cold and deadly in One's hand, rational thought evaporates as if it was never there in the first place.

It is an old, learned response, a deeply ingrained fear. Echoes of torture, of pain, of the loss of self in a swirling nightmare.

It is a horror that was realized in bloody Technicolor during a failed escape attempt when a friendly trucker's head exploded from the force of a Tech's bullet, drenching Steve in red.

Steve sees the gun and he's back there, air leaving his lungs, panic overtaking him like a tidal wave.

One is unprepared for this sudden onslaught.

He was already drowning quietly in the waves of Steve's emotions, as well as being drunk on the novelty of finally, _finally _giving voice to the secret, defining desire of his life. _I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself..._

He hasn't braced himself. He's not ready. Steve's panic hits and overwhelms him just as it does Steve, except that, unlike Steve, One is both unable to cope with the strength of such raw pain and unused to managing and moderating his own corresponding feelings. He staggers back, physically stunned by the unexpected force of Steve's emotional response. 

Steve sees an opening in One's hesitance, and he responds with an instinctual flight reaction. He pushes past One, sending him reeling, and runs, leaping over the overturned table and frantically thrusting away the bits of furniture barricading the door shut.

One groans, bent over as if he'd been punched in the gut, and turns, still in shock, to see Steve escaping.

He reaches for him just as Steve manages to get the door open and hurl himself out.

"Seven, no!!"

Steve ignores him, stumbles out of the door and runs blindly. There is a roar behind him, One yelling, and also the sound of something decidedly not human tearing down an adjacent hallway, seeking out prey.

They sound the same to Steve, somehow, the twin roars both human and animal - a strange harmony of greed.

He doesn't stop to look back. He can sense the surface emotions of the 'It' running through the halls, its inner chant of _prey-pain-prey-light-prey-run-prey-feed-prey_ more than enough to convince him that he shouldn't linger. 

One shouts again, but the sound is nearly lost on Steve in the pounding of his heartbeat, the blood rushing in his ears, and...

He's knocked down, sprawls flat on the ground, twists and turns. It's there, on his back - there's a monster there, a huge thing like a dog but with a face that opens like a flower, and rows of teeth...

Steve sees his death - one of many possible death. It will happen now, now, now...

When the monster bites down...

Four shots, rapid fire, and the heaving mass on top of him howls, shudders horribly, and goes still. 

There is a shocking silence in the moment following, broken only when a small whimper escapes Steve against his will. The noise, unexpected as it is, is enough to drag him back out of the divergent possibilities of his own mortality and into the present moment.

He pushes at the body on top of him but can only get it halfway off, the adrenaline crash, hours of torture, and devastating disappointment at this latest failed escape attempt finally catching up to him, weakening his limbs and draining his reserves of strength.

There are hands helping him a moment later, tugging the monster the rest of the way off, but he doesn't want them, and he doesn't want the needy, cloying words murmured in his ear.

"I've got you, you're alright, shhhh.... don't run, you can't run..."

Steve yelps out a choked "No!" and tries to pull away from the man scooping him up in his arms, tries to crawl away. The arms hold him close, though, and the word is erase by One's increasingly desperate tones.

"We're going... we're going to leave. It'll be alright. I can be sweet to you, Seven...I can be kind and good. I'll protect you, I protected you, I'll protect you. My gift, my Seven."

Steve feels drained, emotionally and physically, and there's not much he can do as One tugs him close. He reaches down and tries to find that violent burst of power, the explosion that comes to him in moments of most dire need.

It's there, deep down, and Steve tries... he doesn't give himself time to overthink it. The fear and the rage and the pain is there and he just reaches down and uses the last of his strength to drag it up out of the depths and unleash the pulse of energy through his fingertips...

One knows what he is trying to do before he does it, before he has a chance to let it out. The older man grabs Steve's wrists and slams his hands flat onto the ground just as Steve lets it go, absorbing most of the power and sending the rest flying uselessly through the floor and cracking the tile beneath them. 

Steve keens in agonized frustration, out of ideas and utterly spent, as One presses down on top of him. He can feel the man's breath on his neck, has a terrible sense memory of their earlier encounter, the almost-rape with Six and Papa looking on.

Now, as then, he is helpless to fight. 

"Don't fight me."

_Helpless._

"It's alright... please, Seven. Please don't be so scared. Nothing bad will ever happen to you again - we'll share each thought, each dream, and it'll be just like it should have been from the start. We're going now."

"One," Steve fights, weakened, exhausted, dangerously close to just breaking. "One, please... please..."

"I've got you, I've got you."

And then a voice, a voice Steve honestly never thought he'd ever get to hear again.

"Let him go!"

Billy feels like he is reliving a memory. He wonders if this is what Steve's waking dreams are like. 

This is familiar, a cracked-mirrored image. The pieces are all there, but not - different, and yet the same.

They are in a hallway, not a room. That's different.

Brenner is not here now, and that's different... except he is always here. He's in their heads, his and Steve's, and he always will be.

He's here now... he's in the Tech. The Tech is just an extension of Papa. The Tech on top of Steve, holding him close, holding him down in the middle of this hallway, straddling him like he's about to take him for his own. 

Like he tried to do the last time, when Six was so weak. Like he tried to do before Seven transformed into a explosion and made him stop.

The lights flicker and distant screams fade away into a strange stillness.

Dustin and Max are here, and that's a big difference. It's such a big difference that Billy feels a gnawing urge to send him away. The children stand there, eyes wide and watchful, shocked by what they are seeing.

They are witnesses to this all-too-familiar scene, and that is wrong. That is bad.

They are children, innocent, and they can't understand what this is. 

They don't know what it's like.

They'd split up - him and Dustin and Max and the others. He'd agreed to this plan relatively easily. He has a job to do but he hadn't wanted to be abandoned, left alone.

Now, strangely, it is all he wants.

He just wants five minutes all to himself.

Billy had frantically searched the room with the giant jars, with his dead siblings, unearthing an overturned cabinet and then shoving handfuls of newly discovered files into Mike's backpack.

He knew, he _knew_ it was not the time, but he couldn't seem to help himself.

_They're what I am. They're what we are._

"Please," he'd begged, shoving another stack of files towards Lucas, who shook his head before accepting them.

"We can't take all of them," the boy piped up finally, an edge to his voice. 

"We can come back, kid," Hopper said. He'd taken another pill and plugged up the hole in his shoulder as best he could, but he still looked pale and wobbly.

"We can't," Billy shot him a look. "They'll take them away before we can. They'll destroy them. We need to know..."

"We need to get to Steve," El interrupted sharply. "We need to close the Gate."

Billy opened his mouth to argue, reflexively, and then shut it again.

Yes. She's right, of course. That's... those things are important. But as he'd looked down at the papers in his hands, files and pages and words, Billy stalled. Something small and fragile in him shivered.

_But... I'm in there. In those pages, in those words, in those numbers. Maybe I'm in there..._

The building rocked, a yowling noise echoing down the hallway as everyone scrambled to maintain their footing. The Lab was in danger, the structure compromised in more ways than one.

They were out of time.

So they split up. Eleven would do what Billy couldn't - go to the gateway that she'd unconsciously built, that Steve had unwittingly opened. A door built of fear.

Billy doesn't have the power to close it, but this little girl... she does.

"You can close it?" he asked her tersely.

She nodded, matching him glare for glare.

"And I'll get Steve," he murmured, half-to himself. Already slipping on his armor, already turning to go.

"_We'll_ get Steve," Dustin corrected him. 

That led to another argument, an exchange of walkie talkies, Max demanding to join them. She seemed strangely unwilling to let Billy out of her sight.

Broken trust, probably, Billy thought... the betrayal felt so keenly by children. More hurtful to children than anything else on earth.

"He's in a room... close to the Bathtub," Eleven murmured, eyes clamped shut, hands over her ears, concentrating. "Second hallway. Five doors down. Room 13."

She'd blinked her eyes open suddenly, nose bleeding, and fixed Billy with eyes wet with fear.

"Hurry."

Billy feels like he is reliving a memory. All the actors are there, all the set pieces, all the horrors. A tableau vivant of one of the worst moments in his life - the time when he was the biggest traitor to himself and to Seven and to everything he thought he believed.

The moment he was weakest, crippled, crushed. Not on the outside, but on the inside, in his soul.

He sees all the separate parts, each in its place. And then all the details fade away.

Because, as always, there at the center of it all is Steve.

Seven.

Steve.

The biggest piece. The only piece that matters. 

"Let him go!" Dustin yells, loud and wild. Max gasps, eyes wide, and she hisses something unintelligible.

Billy lets out an unwitting growl, as annoyed at Dustin as he is angry at the situation. He will need to coach the kid more about the element of surprise at some point, because they just lost one of their biggest weapons because of the boy's outburst.

The two men on the ground freeze.

Steve looks up at him from where he is trapped, pinned down. He is being hurt again. Again, and always.

He looks up with liquid-brown eyes blown with fear, and then his gaze latches onto Billy and the fear...

The fear fades.

Steve looks up at him and breathes out, a sigh that is not quite a sigh of relief.

It's deeper, somehow, than relief. More profound.

Like... arriving.

Like homecoming. 

Fuck it. Who needs surprise when you've got all the weapons in his arsenal?

Billy barely hesitates. He yells, throws out his arms, and sends a careening fireball down the hallway, aimed right at Williams' pale moon face.

The fire is lush, obedient - it is at his fingertips in a instant and then it is flying at speed towards the Tech. It's perfect, a display even Papa would be proud of.

And then what happened before happens again. The fire stops, turns... turns back onto Billy.

Billy sees it coming and barely has time to curse himself for a hotheaded idiot. He shoves Dustin out of the way and the kid skids hard against the tile floor. Max, standing further away, sees what's coming and throws herself to the side.

It's just as well, because the next moment the fireball slams into Billy's chest and knocks him down to the ground. He is so stunned that he doesn't even have a chance to try to block it. It hits him full on.

It hurts. It burns, and the fire never burned Billy before, but now it burns and it _hurts..._

He makes himself stop - stop thinking, stop feeling. The fire is _his_, and he knows it, and it has always belonged to him. The pain eases as Billy reaches and pulls the flames back inside, where they smolder, frustrated, aching for release.

He gasps, grits his teeth against another growl.

Dustin crawls to Max and the relative safety of an overturned medical gurney, eyes wide as he watches the older boy stagger back up to his feet. Max tugs him down behind the gurney and they look on together as Steve struggles to free himself.

"You can't, Six... Memph!" Steve's words are cut off as Williams clamps his hands over the boy's mouth.

The older man silences Steve and then yanks the boy roughly upright until they are standing. His gray eyes are dark and shiny with a bitter, malicious sort of confidence, but that doesn't stop him from positioning Steve in front of him like a human shield. 

"He's right, Six," the Tech says mockingly. "What good are you without your powers?"

His powers...?

_No powers?_

Steve bites down on Williams' hand and the man yelps and partially releases the boy, who elbows him very hard in the stomach for good measure. The young Number lurches forward, clearly trying to put some distance between them, but the Tech grabs his waist and they both fall to their knees, hitting the ground hard.

Steve's mouth, however, remains perfectly free.

"He's a Number! Six, he's a Number, you can't use the fire! He'll...!"

Billy doesn't have time to process this fully, because a shot rings out from the gun suddenly in William's hand, the bullet narrowly missing his head. Steve twists in Williams' grip and lunges for the gun to try to wrestle it from the older man, yelling something indiscernible.

And then something strange happens. Billy feels the tug, the pulls right at his navel that's he has felt only once or twice before - right before a powerful burst of force exploded from Steve and knocked everyone back.

He recognizes the feeling and the power behind it as belonging to Steve, but...

It comes from Williams. It slams against Steve and pushes him to the ground and then the Tech is crawling on top of him again, whispering furiously and...

Billy is reliving a memory. He's been here before.

But now, unlike then, he can move. He _does_ move.

Billy doesn't need to see more. He doesn't need his powers, and he doesn't need to know the whys and wherefores. It's fine.

He knows what he needs to.

He can do this with his fists.

Eleven knows this room. She's been here before. She's visited it often in her nightmares.

The Bathtub is broken, in the process of being rebuilt. Behind it is the doorway she always imagined, that tear in space, that gap in the world that lets the all the monsters out of wherever they live when nobody is looking.

_(And with it, the dark knowledge that she doesn't fear this manifestation of horror, doesn't dread it. The recognition that it is hers, that part of her always wanted the gateway to open. She wanted the monster to come out and gobble up everyone and anyone who ever hurt her, who ever made her feel small and afraid. All the death, all the carnage, and she understands why there are parts of Steve which even he with all his self-reflective understanding chooses not to see. There is dark desire there, a thirst for vengeance, for destruction. A need to right these wrongs, all the wrongs of the world, even if that means the whole world burns. It is here, it is here...)_

Gunshots.

Hopper unloads the contents of his handgun into a monster following them into the room. The thing dies, but before it does it howls, a guttural cry that echoes and is answered back by more and more howling.

"Go, kid!" Hopper yells. He reloads his weapon with shaking fingers. "Close it!"

"Files," Lucas murmurs, eyeing up an abandoned, blood-stained stack on a nearby table. "Shit..."

"They're coming," Will says, breath quickening as he listens to the echoing howls and realizes what they mean.

Mike watches, eyes wide, as Eleven lifts up her arms and faces the terrible, screaming crack in the wall.

Six... Billy is here. He's here, and Dustin and Max are here, his husband, his friends, they're here and...

And they are in danger.

Steve goes for the face, for the soft tissue. He reaches up and jabs at One's eyes, tries to dig in, kicks and claws. 

"Stop it, Seven!" One backhands Steve across the face, pushing him down. "Enough!"

The Number lifts his gun and fires blindly down the hall, and Steve screams. 

"No!"

His panic and his rage flow over him - it's unintentional, but it is also a distraction, another force of emotion, and Steve can see it wash over One like a wave of nausea.

He tries again, tries to concentrate on the most wretched feelings he's got buried deep down in his soul, tries to push them at One. The gun slips from One's trembling hand and he lets out a soft groan, unable to cope, and it's just enough to leave the older man unprepared for when Billy's fist comes flying at his face.

The punch lands, knocks One backwards.

"Steve!"

Steve doesn't have time to grab Billy, because fire is being tossed back over his head and a pulse of force is throwing him aside, slamming him into the wall.

Distantly, he hears a weak "holy shit..." from Max.

"He can use it," Steve chokes out, bruised. "Six... Bi... he... he's a Number, he can use..."

"Yeah!" Billy snaps out, the old berserker rage taking over. "Yeah, Seven!"

Yeah, gotcha.

Steve rolls up fast and tears towards One, who is focused enough on Billy to not see the other Number before he tackles him. They both hit the ground hard, jarring. Billy falls on top them and gets one or two good hits in.

A bolt of almost crippling terror and hate hits them both hard as One pushes the rising, looping tide of their shared emotions into overdrive, sending it back at them just like Steve did. Steve goes to his knees again, still gripping One's suit-jacket weakly, and even Billy looked shaken, ill.

Another bolt, and Steve falls back. A pulse of power pushes Billy away, pushes Steve hard against the ground.

For a terrible moment neither boy can control his limbs. Steve gulps in terror, recognizing the power as his own, as a horrifying, unspeakable extreme, the weapon he could never use.

Something he had never even dared to consider, let alone try.

One is there, deeper in the unconscious abyss than Steve ever dared to go. He is so far into their heads, so deeply tied to their minds and emotions that he is able to move them like dolls, crushing their wills and putting his own in their place.

Controlling their minds and their bodies, taking over.

He grips the colorful threads tightly and twists them until they obey.

He does this and makes each boy a puppet on a string.

Steve can't move, and Billy can't move, and for a long and terrible moment they are wholly at One's mercy. Powerless and helpless.

Billy's eyes find Steve's as they strain against their mental bindings, held fast by One's brutality. They are wide and wet and in the silent exchange both boys attempt to communicate their deepest feelings to each other for what might be the last time.

_I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

_I didn't know._

_I wanted you always._

_I'm yours. Always_

_I'm sorry._

_I'm sorry._

_These powers are mine and yet I'm powerless._

_What good are powers without you?_

_I'm sorry._

_Husband. Beautiful._

_I want to save you._

_I can't save you._

_I love..._

One gasps, tips backwards slightly, weakened by the effort and unable to hold on to them both any longer. Steve immediately feels the mental bindings give, shudders violently and rolls himself on the tile floor, gasping and shaking. He looks up for an instant to see blood gushing from the older man's nose.

Fire then, and then he and Billy both have to move fast to get out of the way. 

Steve kicks out an manages to get One in the knee, sending him down. 

Billy roars and reaches down to break the man's neck but is pushed back by a wall of flames.

Steve, stunned and distracted, lets his gaze fall on the familiar burn scar on his wrist and then trail down to the brand new one now on his forearm. He lets out a little hiccup of pain and looks up at Billy, who is full of rage and frustration as he lands furious punches on One between One's answering bursts of uncontrolled fire. 

Max rolls out from behind the gurney, Dustin two steps behind her, helping her carry the fire extinguisher. Together, they aim it and set it off, dousing half the hallway in foam.

Steve almost has to laugh.

It occurs to Billy that Williams, or whoever he is, is right in a way.

It is true that without his powers Billy feels less like himself now then ever before.

The anger is still there, only now it comes out as fists rather than fire, and as strong as he is he can't keep it up.

He's thrown back against the wall. He crumbles, feels something in his back give.

He can't find his feet. 

Steve is there, yards away, too close and yet too far. Billy can't find his feet and he can't get up and he can't move and he can't reach him, his husband, his Seven.

He's trying to protect Seven, Steve, and he's failing. He's losing the fight against this Tech, this monster, this manifestation of everything that is wrong, wrong, and awful and painful in their life. 

And now, as then, some invisible force which might be an outside power or might be an inner rot is present, lurking, holding him down, making him weak. 

Something that was done to him, or something that he is. Either way, he'd losing.

That, at least, is the same as always.

The kids are coating the hallway in slick foam from a fire extinguisher and One's focus is now on them. Steve and Billy both see it in the same moment, the way One's eyes shift and latch on to the tiny obstacles down the hall.

Just another thread tying Steve here, preventing him from falling into One's arms.

But threads are easy enough to break.

Dustin and Max see it too, a second too late, and they drop the heavy extinguisher and dive away.

One moves.

Billy moves.

Steve moves.

One is crazed now, exhausted by the effort of controlling the other Numbers like puppets, half-insane with the overflow of powers that don't belong to him. He raises his hands but Steve is there, on his feet, flying forward.

He yanks One across the hall and pushes him up against the wall as the older man summons the last of his strength in one final pulse of power.

"No!" Steve roars. He mirrors One's earlier trick, slamming his hands down on One's wrists and pushing down, pushing back with his own force. He mirrors it, but he doesn't have One's skill, he can't absorb the power and send it away.

The pulse of energy is his, it's his doomsday option, and he didn't call it up but it's here now and he can't send it away.

He can only meet it with equal force.

The resulting collision isn't at all like an explosion. It's worse than that, Billy thinks.

For a second there is nothing.

Silence. Like nothing is happening.

Like nothing is wrong.

And then...

Billy can feel it in his bones.

Low, subtle at first. An awful vibration.

And then it grows. Twists. Becomes inescapable.

It's like a wire that just keeps tightening yet won't snap. It is pure, living tension, the pressure before the eruption, and each second is worse than the one before. Growing until you can't stand it... and then growing more.

They can all feel it, the implosion that builds and builds and builds...

Steve holds it.

He clenches his teeth and grips One's hands and holds him against the wall and he holds the power steady.

He holds it.

He.

Holds.

It.

He's holding it. He's holding it!

Oh.

He can't let go. It's a red hot flame and he should drop it right now but he can't. He can't let go.

He can't.

Oh... no...

"It's not yours... Seven," One gasps, taunting. Seven can see the effort the words cost him, but also sees the truth in them. "The power is... mine. I'm going to use it to... blow a hole right through... here. Right... out of here. For us."

_No. Please._

_Hold it!_

Billy has finally managed to push himself up to his knees. He crawls forward, bowed under the pulsing tension. He reaches up to his right ear with a trembling hand and pulls his hand away to see red smeared on it, the vibrations from the threatening implosion/explosion making all of their ears bleed. 

Steve sees Billy out of the corner of his eye and wants to stop him, wants to throw out his arms and motion him away. He can't, though. He doesn't dare even blink.

_I can't let go._

He's trapped in a death dance with One and he can't take his hands away.

He makes a noise instead, a sharp, animalistic negative which stops Billy in his tracks.

The power looping between One and Steve almost feels like it's spreading, throwing everything into suspended animation, into the instant of potential before a falling object hits the ground. It coats Billy and the kids, the dead monster on the floor. 

It'll just keep growing, Steve thinks. Another gateway. Another door to hell.

Where the strength to hold on is coming from Steve doesn't know. It feels like his teeth are shattering in his mouth, and he can feel blood is gushing from his nose and ears. He tastes copper, swallows a mouthful, tries not to choke.

It is clear as Steve looks into those slate gray eyes that One doesn't think he's going to survive this... or doesn't care. If the end result of this experiment, more destructive than anything even Brenner could have thought of, kills them all, One would be perfectly happy.

Perfectly happy. Dead, and as close to perfectly happy as he would ever get.

Steve holds on.

One plays out the fantasy, committed right to the end.

"Come with me, Seven," he hisses, face pale and awash with blood pouring from his nose. "Kill the others and come with me. You and I could live..."

Steve growls, shaking his head and tightening his hands as he pushes back against the older man.

Fighting to keep his grip on the spiraling, shattering pulse of power.

Holding on for dear life.

"You're gentle-hearted," One sneers, eyes glinting. "That's good. I'll love you... and you'll forgive me."

Steve spits out blood on One's face, snarling, reduced to raw animal determination. One's eyes drift closed and his tongue darts out to catch it, to lick up Steve's blood and saliva, moaning in a parody of passion. 

"I've seen your dreams," he murmurs, opening his eyes lazily, gazing at Steve with those adoring, washed-out eyes as if in a dream. "I've shared your thoughts... I know you, I know you better than you know yourself! I know you want a home, to be safe.... to be free and safe and loved. To be called by your _name_.

"To be loved for who you are... and I do, I _do._ I can be good to you... you'll have everything you want, everything. You just need to come with me and leave them."

There is a long silence then, a tipping point. Steve stares at One, wide-eyed, and releases a tiny whimper.

His grip looses slightly, and the power vibrates with its awesome destructive potential.

Mike feels sick, and he feels exhilarated, and he feels terrified in a way he never thought possible.

There are bodies all around him - bodies of people and of monsters. Things that the obscurest pages of D&D could never have imagined. The stench of blood and burnt flesh wafts throughout the large space. A half-finished isolation tank looms large and reflects the weird light that permeates the room.

And Eleven - the girl, the pretty girl in the store, the one who was looking at the dress - she is floating now.

Her eyes glint with something profoundly unearthly. It is like madness, or power, or fire. It is there, in her, and it is coming out of her.

This thing... this monstrous thing...

They can all feel it. 

The gateway shrieks and writhes and glows... and closes.

Eleven screams. The universe cracks and then corrects itself.

Steve is looking at One. Just looking, just watching, his mouth open, panting.

He can't be considering it, Dustin thinks as he slips back behind the gurney, head pounding.

He can't be, Max thinks, eyeing up their positions and Steve's sudden stillness.

But...

_Aren't you tired? _

One's voice echoes in Steve's head, the stress of holding on with both hands leaving his mind and his heart cracked open like a piece of overripe fruit, exposed and vulnerable. 

_Don't you want it to stop?_

_Don't you want to stop fighting, stop hurting? _

_Don't you want to be called by your name? _

_Don't you want to be worshiped by someone who loves you more than life?_

_He would do anything for you. He said that he would die without you. He's worshiped you from afar this whole time. He said he would give you anything, be anything you wanted. Be yours, utterly._

_You could command him. Use him, like Papa used you. He could be your puppet. He could be your everything. You could make him do anything. You wouldn't even have to try._

_Don't you want to be free?_

Steve's eyes go distant.

He sucks a breath in, lets it out again.

_And you'd never have to be lonely anymore._

The silence stretches for a long moment - a silence in which lives a kind of violence, the destruction of an old way of thinking.

A final brutalization of Steve's soul.

Steve... Seven... whoever he is now. Doesn't matter anymore. Never did, maybe.

He is tired.

_So tired._

_I just want to..._

"Sweetheart," Billy whispers.

The word comes out so quiet that for a moment it seems like no one heard it.

Steve blinks. Once, twice.

He holds on to One.

He holds on to the building power.

He tilts his head slightly, listening.

"Sweetheart," Billy murmurs again, slightly louder.

It isn't their word, it isn't a word they have shared - it's one from a TV show that only Billy has seen, but Billy says it anyway, and Steve, power roaring through him, waiting to be unleashed, hears him.

He hears the meaning in the word.

He hears the _name_.

"My daring," Billy says, soft and gentle, sweet and firm. A bedroom voice... a voice for afterwards, in the dark, in the quiet. Billy is still out of reach, still on the ground, still on his knees... but this is fitting. This feels right. 

Steve hears him.

"Baby," Billy murmurs. "Sweetheart."

One hisses, choking on his stolen power.

Billy and Steve ignore him.

"Pretty," Billy hums, reverent, awestruck, willing and eager to be remade every day by the sheer wonder of this thing they share. Not master and slave, not simple, but theirs. It's theirs.

"Pretty boy... sweetheart."

"Angel."

Billy lets out a low sigh, sees sun and the ocean and Steve, Steve, Steve.

"Baby."

Steve looks back.

He turns his head slightly, turns back, turns to see.

He is Lot's wife. He looks back and makes eye-contact with Billy.

Just for a moment. Just a moment.

Not forever.

Nothing they have is forever. 

And yet, in that moment, it feels like a kind of always.

"Steve," Billy breathes. "Steve."

Steve looks back at One, his fists a death-grip on the older man's hands as they fight each other for control of the rapidly combusting explosion.

Then he takes a last deep breath in and pushes everything _out_.

The air around them shakes and shreds, and for a moment everyone in that hallway has the gift of precognition. Everyone shares in Steve's terrible power. They can all see what will happen.

They see it and they can't stop it.

One grins, manic. "Together," he sing-songs.

Steve lets out a dreadful scream that ripples in the air, lets out all his hate and all his love. All the things that lived in him in silence in these terrible rooms and terrible hallways, now given sound and force. Now released.

Steve lets go. He lets go of the power.

He lets it all go.

The universe remakes itself.

A gateway opens and then closes itself again in an instant.

And when Billy blinks the tears away Steve and One are gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm getting better! Only a few weeks delay this time - writing in 2020 is exhausting, but totally worth it because of you guys. Thank you for hanging in there over this unexpectedly long stretch of time, promise I won't drag this out too much longer! 
> 
> Almost to the end! This has been a hella tough story to write given the nature of the topic, but I've really enjoyed working with the AU and I'm hopeful I can do some sequels later when I'm in a better place to write consistently. You guys are amazing and I can't get over the interest shown in this story - thank you, thank you!
> 
> In a related note, September is Suicide Prevention Month, and between world events and the personal obstacles people already face, the need for care and support has never been greater. This story is about abuse, surviving, and fighting destructive cycles, but none of us can heal and grow alone. Please reach out to someone if you or a loved one are in a vulnerable position, and please also promote options for mental and emotional health and support when possible. 
> 
> Love you guys! As always please drop a comment if you feel like it, I'm always so happy chatting with you guys. Hugs all around, beautiful stardust people! <3 <3 <3
> 
> https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/promote-national-suicide-prevention-month/  
https://www.rainn.org/


End file.
